Bonus Scene Basil Hallward
Reading Guidance: Mention of religious trauma and internalized homophobia related to the time period and setting.
Dorian is sitting at the piano when I enter the room. He’s obsessed with composing music, or at least he used to be. Lately he contents himself with playing other men’s works instead of designing anything new himself.
Though I’m trying to be quiet, he must hear my steps, because he says, without turning around, “I want to borrow this music, Basil. It’s delightful.”
“You may, if you are good for me today, and sit very still.”
He spins around on the piano stool, and his beauty strikes me full in the face, like a flash of lightning.
Straight, symmetrical features. Flushed cheeks. Artfully tousled golden curls. Rosy lips that part in a sly smile as he notices my reaction.
“I’ll be a good boy, Basil, I promise,” he purrs, kicking one leg over the other. “I’ll be so perfectly still, you’ll think I’m a statue.”
I swallow hard. Good boy …
We’re both in our twenties, and he’s only two years younger than I am, but he seems far more youthful. The world has begun licking at his innocence, but it hasn’t started gnawing in earnest. Not yet.
Perhaps I go too far, calling him “innocent.” He’s far more attuned to pleasurable sins than I realized when I first met him. And sometimes, in unguarded moments, the sunny beauty of his face flickers, like a candle going out, and beneath it I glimpse a shadowed pain. He had a difficult childhood, I know, though I’m not certain of all the particulars. I’m less interested in his past than I am in his present…his presence …his beguiling beauty and charming personality.
Sometimes I think I am far too fascinated with him. Sometimes, as now, my heart beats much too quickly in his presence, and my bloods stirs in wicked ways. I know he notices. He takes pleasure in toying with me, every time I paint him. As a religious man, a stalwart Catholic, I should have painted him once, depicted him as some saint or other, and let it be. But I keep sending him letters, or pulling him aside at dinner parties, asking if I can paint him again…and again…and again.
I step behind my easel, where the painting I’ve been working on has taken partial form on the canvas, and I begin opening my paints, mixing the colors I need to mimic the smooth ivory mounds of his muscles and the pale peach blush of his skin. I’m painting him nude this time—from the waist up, anyway. I’ve painted him naked before, but that was at the beginning of our acquaintance, before my obsession with him reached its current peak. I want to paint him like that again—utterly bare and vulnerable. I want to communicate that air of debauched innocence, the blending of freshness and carnality that seems to flow from him like a warm spring breeze.
“Sit on that sofa, like you did yesterday.” I point him to the glossy leather Chesterfield. “And assume the same position, please.”
“Shirt off, like last time?” His long fingers are already plying the buttons, undoing them one by one. I watch as his sculpted chest is unveiled. Those nipples—I’ll need a touch more pink in the ivory, to get the color just right.
Dorian drapes himself along the sofa, with a cushion against his left ribs and one elbow on the armrest. “Are you sure this is how you want me?” An innocent question, and yet the droop of his lashes over his blue eyes and the tilt at the corner of his mouth suggest otherwise.
I swear I can’t decide if he’s an angel sent to take me to heaven or a devil who longs to drag me to hell.
“Be still and silent,” is my caustic reply. Dorian pouts a little, but he says nothing as I begin to paint.
For a while I’m immersed in the craft—laying the color just right, controlling my brushstrokes, creating the layers of light and shadow I can see on Dorian’s recumbent body. But as the connection among the three of us deepens—Dorian, the painting, and me—a flow of energy seems to circulate through the room, and I feel as if I’m drunk on the best golden wine, as if I’ve ascended to a higher creative plane. The brush almost moves of its own accord, and I sense myself beginning to reach what I have always longed for and never quite achieved—a perfect likeness of Dorian Gray on canvas.
Then I begin to worry, as I often do when painting him, that I am revealing too much, not just of him, but of me . His image is becoming too radiant, too glorious, too divine. I’m baring my soul in this picture. Only someone who worships him could paint him this well.
I retreat from the easel, breathing hard, and I turn my back to Dorian under the pretense of wiping my forehead.
I have seen him every day this week, either in my studio or elsewhere. I’ve sought him out, summoned him, arranged my schedule and my walks to coincide with outings I know he plans to take. Over the past few months I’ve orchestrated countless “chance” meetings, and yet I told myself all I wanted was more portrait practice with him as my model, that all I saw in him was a beautiful thing or a pleasant acquaintance. Not someone I need. Not a man I might crave.
You’re going mad over this fellow, Basil . You cannot continue like this. It must end.
“This isn’t working,” I tell him, wadding up the cloth in my hands, keeping my back turned.
“Perhaps a slight change of the plan,” he says. “A different sort of painting than the one you previously envisioned.”
His voice has changed. I can tell he has shifted from his original pose. I spin around with a rebuke on my lips—but the sight of him freezes the words.
Somehow, in those few moments when I had my back turned, he divested himself of his remaining clothes. He’s standing naked in my study, his body glowing in the sunlight from the nearby windows. He has shaved himself from jawline to toes for this painting, and every part of him radiates youth and health, from his toned arms and taut abdominal muscles to the erect length between his legs. The bawdy evidence of what he wants from me.
And still those blue eyes shine with an openness that belies his actions. As if he has no intention of seducing anyone. As if he simply needed to be free of his clothing, and so he has discarded it.
He walks over to a chair and picks up an ivory sheet that I used as the background for a still life painting days ago. Dorian arranges the sheet over the sofa before draping himself across it.
“Try me like this,” he says softly.
We’ve stepped close to this precipice before, he and I. I should do what I’ve done every other time—either make some excuse to end the session and send him on his way, or continue painting him calmly, coolly, showing no signs of the emotion surging in my chest.
For years I have striven to follow the laws of the Catholic Church, in private if not in public. An artist’s life is not known for its piety; I’ve committed sins aplenty. But I’ve confessed them all, done penance for all…except certain lustful thoughts, which I can’t speak aloud, even to a priest.
Here in London, I’m not open about my religion—in fact, most of my associates believe me to be a Protestant. Some of my patrons would distance themselves if they knew my true religious affiliations. And everyone of my acquaintance, whether Catholic or Protestant, would openly despise me if they knew the thoughts I am entertaining at this moment, as I gaze upon Dorian Gray.
The laws and the rules and the Scriptures are a ponderous weight—heavy chains laid over my shoulders, restraining me from running to the joy and light that is Dorian. Those chains usually haul me backward into a morose acceptance, a dark resignation, a weary determination to comply, to submit.
But this time… this time , I resist. I hold my ground, and I look at Dorian with the eyes not of a painter, but of a man both starved and devoted. Ravenous for pleasure, infatuated with him.
He sees the change in my face, and his eyes light up with something deeper and more poignant than lust or excitement. There’s raw longing in his face—a craving as fierce as my own.
Rising from the sofa, he holds out both hands, a silent plea.
The chains of faith tighten around my body and heart, but I pull against them, more strongly than I ever have, and I take one step toward Dorian.
His lip quivers, and a muscle flexes along his jaw. His outstretched fingers twitch, and for a moment he looks so frail, so young, so alone.
I’m alone, too. I have been alone ever since I fled my father’s tumultuous house in Ireland, abandoning my mother and my siblings to his rages. The guilt of that selfish act is a chain, too.
Under my new name I built a life for myself and laid a new path, brick by brick. That path has brought me here, to this golden-haired angel, this charming devil, this muse who suddenly seems more human than he ever has in my presence. I am half-afraid that if I touch him, the spell will break, and he will be transformed from god into man, and I will lose the beautiful, fragile picture of him that exists in my mind. The ideal Dorian will become the physical Dorian, and I will descend into the despair that always follows the realization that nothing truly flawless can exist in this world.
And that, perhaps, is the heaviest weight of all, the thickest and most ponderous chain, coiled around my waist. One day I shall paint myself as a man straining against countless chains, dragged ever backward into the brooding darkness by living chains that have promised him an eternity of light.
Perhaps the chains are lying, and there is no blissful existence after this mortal world. Perhaps they have twined around me to suck all the joy out of my life until I age and slip into an eternal void. What if there is no god, and the only heaven I will ever touch is the trembling mouth of Dorian Gray?
I think kissing him might be worth the risk. And not only a kiss—he’s asking for more. With his whole body, he is begging for all of me.
One more step, toward him.
“Basil,” he murmurs.
My name on his tongue. The chains melt away, and I seize his hands, a twisting grip. Only for a second, and then one of my hands slides along the slant of his waist, while my other hand cups the back of his skull, twines with the fine gold strands of his hair. His soft curls hug my fingers lightly.
He’s panting, his lithe body swaying naked and urgent against my clothing. Cupping my face between his hands, he kisses me.
The sweetness of his mouth is the only absolution I need. The brush of his fingertips along my throat and chest sanctifies me, sets me apart for him alone. He tugs impatiently at the collar of my shirt.
He’s right—I’m wearing too many clothes. But I can’t bring myself to strip for him just yet, to bare my unremarkable body to those stunning blue eyes.
“Not yet,” I gasp. “I’m not…beautiful.”
He draws back, clasping my face between his palms again. “Basil,” he whispers. “To me, you are glorious. Your artistic soul, the way you feel beauty so deeply yet can only express it with paint, not words—it’s charming. The way you look at me is beguiling. You’ve enchanted me, and I crave you, more than I’ve ever craved anyone.” He releases my face, reaches between my legs, and presses his hand there. “Let me have you. You’ve told the servants not to interrupt us—no one will know, and I won’t tell. You’re safe with me.”
He kisses me again, softly, whispers, “This is safe.” Presses his mouth to the heated skin of my neck. “This is safe.” He undoes the buttons of my trousers, fingertips skimming my erection until I bite back a groan.
“This is safe,” Dorian murmurs, over and over, as he disrobes me completely.
I am square and pale, covered in dark hair. My body still retains some of its strength from years of labor, before I escaped that life through my art. I deceived many people along the way, stole and bargained, forged and feigned, until I reached the position of respect I now command in the wealthy circles of London society. I’ve confessed the deceit before God, but I’m not sure I regret it. How else was a poor Irish lad to make something of himself?
Clothes were key. The right clothes, and a certain presence—a mask I assumed in front of potential clients and connections. And of course, the proper inflections. The King’s English. I had to train myself out of the brogue.
But all of that falls away as I stand before Dorian. All my fine clothes, my pretense, my mask, my talents, even my words—they vanish, and I am simply myself, as vulnerable to him as he is to me.
Dorian looks me up and down. Then he smiles at me, a truly brilliant smile. “A pleasure to finally meet you, Basil.”
I release a long breath, and with it goes some of the tension in my body. I let myself move closer to him, allow my skin to glide against his.
Both of us are uncertain at first. I have had two trysts with women—never one with a man, and I’m not sure of his history with men. I don’t inquire about it. We twist our bodies tightly together, gripping each other like drowning men clinging to the hope of life, moving with desperate urgency.
I have never felt such blissful friction. Every flex of Dorian’s hips sends a fresh flow of pleasure through my body. Hungrily he kisses me, and I open to him, exploring his teeth, savoring the hot, wet, silky inside of his cheeks.
With my tongue in his mouth and his hardness pressed to mine, I writhe and rub, huffing as the heat builds. At last, with a soft, reckless cry, Dorian seizes both our cocks in one hand and jerks frantically until we come, spilling together in a glistening fountain of creamy white.
Heaving ragged breaths, he wraps me in his arms again, seals his body to mine, heedless of the slick release on our stomachs. His tongue finds refuge in my mouth, and he breathes into me. My palms rest on his smooth ass, holding him close.
He breaks the kiss, gives me a tender peck on the cheek. “I’ve wanted this for weeks.”
I draw back from him. Now that the heat has ebbed, the chill of the chains is creeping over my skin again.
Dorian eyes me, calculation in his gaze. “You know something, Basil, I think we should pretend this never happened. Yes…we’ll get dressed again…at least you will…and we shall continue with the portrait session. I can’t imagine such an indiscretion is likely to occur again, do you?” He gives me a beatific, insolent smile.
“You’re right. It must not happen again,” I reply. And I halfway mean it.
But the other half of me takes the reins again later that afternoon. How could I resist, when Dorian plies me with suggestive phrases, faint moans, and naughty arches of his brow? How is a man to continue his work in the face of such purposeful temptation? It’s a slow, delicate torture until I break, as Dorian knew I would, and I leave my painting to inspect his pretty cock with my lips and hands. For artistic purposes, of course. Not because I want to know how he tastes when he comes.
He stays for dinner, during which I tell the butler to have a room prepared for my guest, who will be spending the night. And after the house has gone to bed, I’m not surprised to hear the door of my bedroom open, or to see Dorian slip through the aperture, wrapped in a silken robe, carrying a candle. Nor am I astounded when he locks the door and drops his robe, or when his bare body slides into the sheets next to mine.
When he entered my room, I was in the middle of a whispered prayer, a heartsore confession of my sins…but when I feel his heat, the iron links of my guilt shrink to threads and snap with the twitch of a finger. I lunge for him, and we spend most of the night exploring all the ways in which two men may delight each other.
It is after one such delight, when Dorian lifts his head from between my legs and crawls up my body with a satisfied smile on his face, that I realize I want to do this with him forever. Not only that—I wish to preserve him like this forever, exactly as he is, with this perfect face and tempting body, with all the physical prowess of lusty youth.
He kisses me, and I allow it, but my mind is elsewhere, trapped within the dreadful truth that this moment cannot last. Within a handful of years, Dorian will change. I will change. Our bodies are already decaying, already dying, and this charmed night, once over, will never occur again, not exactly in this way.
After this, our relationship cannot be the same. I know myself, and in the days to come I will torture my own soul over these desires. I will lash myself with guilt, vow to myself never to indulge my cravings again. My mind and heart are fickle boats, swept back and forth with the currents and tides, yet always drawn backward in the end by the anchor of my faith.
All this is inevitable. And so I must secure Dorian before guilt, age, or fear come between us. I will preserve him on canvas before the flush of youth and pleasure has ebbed from his cheeks.
He sleeps, but I remain awake. When dawn flings golden threads between the heavy drapes of my room, I toy with Dorian again, stroking his cock while I devour the sight of him sleepily rousing, blinking awake. His moans are the sweetest music, but I stifle them with my free hand while I coax him higher, higher, nearer to climax. He comes on his belly, his body drawn tight with compulsive pleasure.
“Come.” I grab my dressing gown and slippers. “Come to my study. I must paint you like this, right now. Not sitting this time—standing. Standing like David, like Adonis, like Apollo in all his glory.”
“Let a man catch his breath, Basil,” he mutters, rolling over onto his stomach with a lazy grin. I smack his ass sharply, and he yelps. “Very well, I’m up. Calm yourself, will you? Such a restless stallion you are. And yet so sensitive.” He gives me a naughty smirk.
“Enough. I must get to work at once.”
He seizes his robe and follows me to the study, mumbling about artists who do not grasp the concept of leisure.
I prepare my paints in a hectic frenzy. Through my veins soars a need I recognize—the desperate urge to commit what I can see in my mind onto canvas. No, that’s wrong…it’s not that I see it, exactly…I can feel it, in my blood and in my bones. I can almost touch it. It’s as if the art I’m about to create already exists, in some alternate plane, and it is screaming to be uncovered, to be pulled through the flimsy veil between that world and this one.
The picture of Dorian Gray has already been painted, in all its detail and perfection. I simply have to reveal it with deft swipes of my brush.
I toss the old canvas aside, clip a new one in place. Then I rush around Dorian like a whirlwind, correcting the angle of his hips, moving his left foot forward, adjusting the position of his shoulders and arms. He falls into the pose I set for him with such natural grace that my heart throbs with pained delight.
And then I begin to paint.
Dorian stands there for hours, watching me with a more serious expression in his blue eyes than I have ever seen from him. I paint like a man possessed, sometimes with frenzied flicks of the brush, sometimes with exquisite, possessive control of each line. When the servants poke their heads into the room, I bellow at them to be off and leave us alone until I say otherwise. And still Dorian stands, unmoving, not complaining about thirst, hunger, weariness, or any other bodily need. He’s galvanized by my creative fury, drawn into the maelstrom with me. Like a man enchanted, he watches me bring him to life.
I barely mark the hours as they pass. Unrelenting, I relinquish myself to the flow of energy through my body, swirling outward from me into Dorian, and then back into the painting. That’s how I envision it, though my logical mind knows it is just my imagination. Art cannot truly transfer or consume. It is merely a reflection of reality, and cannot alter reality itself.
Or perhaps it can.
My mother told me once that she used to sing. “Had a lot of suitors, I did,” she confessed, in an undertone. “They loved my voice, and my songs. Until your father came. And then I sang only for him, until I couldn’t sing no more. He drained it all out of me, all the music. That’s why he goes out every night, you see, looking for taverns and such that have music playing, or stories being told. He needs that, you see. Needs it to live.”
My mother’s voice was a raw, raspy thing, and I could not believe it had ever been otherwise. Nor did I believe that my father was some sort of devourer of music and beauty. To be sure, there were many times when he came home furious and wretched, looking more gaunt and hollow-eyed than ever. He would drink, and he would groan, and then he would rage at us. But other times he would come back bright-eyed, refreshed, and joyful, praising some talented painter, poet, or singer he had encountered. His good mood might last days or weeks, and then the darkness would return.
I have always told myself that my father was sensitive to beauty, and that the ugliness of the world corrupted him. But at moments like these, when I’m swallowed up in the dizzying tempest of creation, when it feels as if real, tangible power is moving through me, sucking in every drop of inspiration around me, I think of my father’s hunger, and of my mother’s lost voice. And I wonder.
But I push aside the wonder, and I focus on Dorian, my Dorian. Last night he eased himself inside me, slow and gentle, the path eased by a balm he fetched from his room. I came undone for him, harder than ever before in my life—utterly shattered. As I lay there, spent and nearly sobbing, with his hands gripping my body and his length throbbing in my rear, my soul latched onto his with all its teeth.
His soul is wicked and pure, soft and violent, pristine and yet already curling at the edges with the corruption of time. If I do nothing else in this life, I will do this one thing. I will save him, I will collect him, I will preserve him in this piece, my greatest work. Dorian as mine, Dorian forever.
Almost before I realize it, it’s done.
Usually, when I finish a painting, it’s never really finished. There are always little tweaks I want to make, dainty highlights, small adjustments. But this one—it’s whole. Complete, in the most satisfying way. I sign my name with a flourish and I step back, feeling gutted and satisfied at the same time.
I glance up at Dorian. I’ve been looking at him this whole time, seeing into him, as it were—but now I realize how pale he is. His jaw is tight and his legs are trembling slightly.
“It is finished, then,” he says.
“Yes.”
“Thank god.” He collapses and sprawls on the carpet with his arms spread wide. My mind darts to a place of utter blasphemy as I realize who he reminds me of—a debauched savior with mournful blue eyes, sacrificed to the passions of men. His cock lies limp against his thigh, and his lips part seductively over his white teeth.
I’m exhausted, and my fingers ache…and yet I’m seized by the compulsion to keep painting him, over and over, until I am consumed. I fight the urge, guiding myself back into that mental space of wholeness, of completeness. I did what I set out to do—created his perfect likeness, with a depth in the eyes that I’ve never achieved in any portrait. I don’t paint portraits often, since I prefer landscapes and still life—but of the ones I’ve done, this is by far the best, and completed much faster than usual. A unique achievement in my lifetime. A crowning glory.
Dorian leaps up and pulls his robe on, leaving the sash untied as he walks toward the easel. “I want to see it.”
“No!” My hand whips out, a reflexive slap. He draws a sharp breath and steps back, while the rose of his cheek heightens slightly where I struck him. His eyes fly wide, hurt pooling in their blue depths.
Shame rolls through me, hot and crimson. “I’m sorry,” I gasp. “I didn’t—I’m still in the madness of it all—forgive me.”
His lips compress and muscle feathers in his jaw, but after a moment he nods. “Always, Basil.”
I stare at the painting. In my chest, beneath the heat of the shame, coils a dark, possessive creature that wants to clutch the portrait close and snarl at anyone who approaches. No one shall ever see it but me. No one shall love it except me.
Saints preserve me…I must be going mad.
“You must take the picture,” I say breathlessly to Dorian. “It’s yours. My gift to you.”
“Truly?” Delight suffuses his face. “You’re giving it to me?”
“Yes.” I force myself to step back. He rounds the easel, with a cautious glance at me, and gazes upon the portrait.
“By the seven hells, Basil, it’s beautiful,” he murmurs. “It’s an exact likeness. More than that, really. It looks as if my doppelganger there could step right out of his picture and join us. Stunning work, my love.”
My heart twinges at the last two words, pleasure and guilt mingled. “I’m glad you approve.” I peer at the painting. Am I imagining it, or is the portrait’s left cheek slightly pinker than its right one?
I blink twice and decide I’m overtired. It’s high time I visited the privy, ate something, and had a drink.
Dorian sidles into my space, his lashes shading his eyes like feathery willow branches trailing over a blue lake. His lips curve with a sinful smile, full of dangerous promises.
Before he can touch me, I withdraw. “You should go home and have some breakfast, or lunch, or tea…I’m not sure what time it is. Once the portrait is dry, I’ll have it framed, packaged, and sent to you.”
His face falls. “Basil…”
I can’t bear his disappointment. And I know I can’t bear to be apart from him for very long.
“Perhaps I’ll come along with the portrait when it’s delivered,” I say tersely.
At that, he brightens, then leans closer and says, in a soft, seductive tone, “Do come, Basil, as many times as you like.”
He kisses my cheek, and I close my eyes, clenching my hands against the desire to seize him and drag him to the floor with me.
But when he turns away and heads out of the room at a jaunty pace, I let him go.
After all, I have his portrait. It’s as good as holding his beautiful soul in my hands.