Chapter 10: The Artist and the Athlete
The studio had become a world unto itself. Time stretched and contracted in strange ways, measured not in hours but in the drying of Prussian blue on a palette, in the slow arc of sunlight moving across the floorboards, in the steady rhythm of Ally’s breathing as he held a pose. The “no hiding” pact had forged a new, intense quiet between them, a focused energy that hummed beneath the surface of every brushstroke and every glance.
Roz worked with a controlled ferocity. Canvases in various states of completion leaned against every wall. A massive, chaotic scrum, all straining muscle and mud-streaked jerseys. A quieter, more poignant study of two players binding, their foreheads almost touching, a moment of unity before the storm. And at the centre of it all, the portrait. Just Ally. Not in his kit, but in a simple grey t-shirt and jeans, sitting on the old velvet armchair she’d dragged into the light. Fiona was right. Roz wasn’t painting the roar. She was painting the quiet before it.
“My shoulder’s screaming,” Ally said, his voice a low rumble that didn’t break his stillness. He was a surprisingly good subject, capable of a profound, physical patience.
“Then tell it to shut up. I need five more minutes on this eye.” She didn’t look up from the canvas, her own body coiled with concentration. A strand of hair had escaped her bun and she blew it out of her field of vision.
“You said that twenty minutes ago.”
“Time is a construct. Hold still.”
He smiled, a tiny movement at the corner of his mouth that she captured instantly, a dab of titanium white mixed with a whisper of ochre. This was their rhythm now. The work was the primary thing, a shared purpose that allowed everything else to exist in the periphery. The stolen kisses were breaks. The arguments were about hydration and posture.
The door buzzer shattered the silence.
Roz jerked, her brush skidding a tiny, unwanted streak of grey into the wet background. “Damn it.”
“Ignore it,” Ally murmured, not moving.
“It might be the courier for the stretcher bars.” She wiped her brush on a rag and padded to the intercom. “Hello?”
“Roz? It’s Moira from the SRU press office.” The voice was crisp, professional, and entirely unexpected. “I was in the neighbourhood and hoped to pop up for a quick progress check? The board is getting eager.”
Roz’s stomach tightened. She shot a panicked look at Ally, who was now leaning forward, his relaxed pose gone. The studio was a cathedral to her process—chaotic, intimate, and filled with the vulnerable, half-formed soul of the painting. Letting the PR machine in here felt like a violation.
“Now’s… not actually a great time,” Roz said, her voice tinny through the speaker.
“Oh, I’ll only be a moment! Just a peek and a few photos for the socials. The fans are loving the ‘behind the scenes’ narrative.”
The narrative. Roz’s fingers went cold. She looked at Ally. He gave a slight, resigned nod. No hiding.
“Okay. Come up.” She buzzed her in.
The next ninety seconds were a frantic, silent scramble. Roz threw a paint-splattered sheet over the portrait-in-progress. Ally stood, rolling his shoulder with a wince, and pulled on a hoodie over his t-shirt, somehow making the casual look deliberate. By the time the brisk knock came, the studio looked merely messily professional, not personally sacred.
Moira was all sharp blazer and bright smile, her eyes missing nothing. “Roz! Wonderful. And Ally, good to see you on the mend. Perfect.” She didn’t wait for an invitation, stepping in and turning a slow circle, her phone already up, snapping photos. “The energy in here is just fabulous. So creative.”
Roz felt like a zoo animal. “It’s coming along.”
“I can see that! The scale is impressive.” Moira stopped in front of the covered portrait. “And this is the main event, yes? May I?”
A beat of hesitation. Roz nodded, pulling the sheet away.
The painting was far from finished. The background was a moody, abstract wash, the chair barely suggested. But Ally’s face and shoulders were emerging from the canvas with startling clarity. It was all quiet intensity. The eyes, that specific calm Fiona had mentioned, held a depth that the preliminary sketches had only hinted at. You could see the thinker, the man who read philosophy books on tour, not just the warrior.
Moira was silent for a long moment. “Oh,” she said finally. The professional veneer cracked, just for a second, revealing genuine surprise. “It’s not what I expected.”
“What did you expect?” Ally asked, his voice neutral.
“I don’t know. More… action. Teeth gritted, maybe. This is… intimate.” Moira recovered, tapping her phone screen. “It’s powerful. Definitely. The board will be pleased. Very modern.” She took several pictures, directing Ally to stand near it, then to the side. “Let’s get one of you two? Artist and subject? The story is really resonating.”
Roz stiffened. Ally moved without prompting, coming to stand beside her. He didn’t put his arm around her, but his shoulder brushed hers, a solid, warm point of contact. “Smile, darling,” he said, just to her, and the private joke in his tone—a mimicry of a thousand shallow PR moments—made her lips quirk unwillingly.
Moira snapped the picture. “Lovely. Really lovely.” She scrolled through her shots. “We’ll push these out today. ‘The heart behind the glory.’ That kind of thing.” She looked at Roz. “We’ll need the finished piece for the gala unveiling in six weeks. The timeline is firm.”
“I know,” Roz said, the pressure settling back on her shoulders like a lead cloak.
After Moira left, the studio’s sacred quiet felt punctured, contaminated by the smell of perfume and ambition. Roz stood motionless, staring at the painting. Ally came up behind her, not touching her.
“She called it intimate,” Roz whispered.
“It is.”
“That’s the problem. It’s too intimate. They’re going to sell our… this… as part of the campaign. The ‘narrative.’” She spat the word out. “They’ll use what’s between us to sell tickets.”
“They’ll try,” he corrected. He moved to her easel, picking up a clean brush. He dipped it in a smudge of leftover ultramarine on her palette and, before she could stop him, made a small, deliberate mark on the canvas’s raw edge, a tiny blue streak. “There. Now it’s got my fingerprint on it too. Literally. So let them sell it. It’s still ours.”
She looked from the mark to his face. The calm in the painting was there in his eyes now, but it was edged with a fierce protectiveness. “Six weeks,” she said.
“I’ll be cleared to play in four. The unveiling gala will be my first public event back.” He put the brush down. “We’ll be ready.”
That night, the ‘narrative’ found its way online. The SRU’s social media feeds posted the photos. The one of them together, Roz looking up at the canvas, Ally looking at her, his expression unreadable but undeniably focused. The caption read: Capturing the essence of a champion. Artist Roz MacDonald and star flanker Ally Fraser deep in the creative process. The commissioned portrait unveiling, September 28th. #HeartOfTheTeam #FutureLegacy
The comments flooded in.
They’re definitely shagging.
She’s so tiny! How is she painting something that big?
That portrait is actually deep. Get her to do the whole squad.
Fraser looks fit. Hope the knee’s healing.
This is such a cool project. Love seeing this side of the game.
It was a strange, public dissection of their private space. Roz read them, a knot of anxiety in her chest, until Ally took her phone away.
“See? Some get it. Some don’t. Most don’t care. It’s just noise.” He pulled her onto the old sofa, wrapping an arm around her. “The painting is what matters. This,” he squeezed her shoulder, “is what matters. The noise is just air.”
She leaned into him, listening to his steady heartbeat through his chest. The studio was dark now, lit only by the amber glow of the streetlamp outside. The canvases around them were silent witnesses. She thought of the blue streak on the edge of her painting, his defiant fingerprint in her medium.
“Okay,” she said, echoing her word from the night before. It was becoming their word. A treaty.
“Okay,” he echoed back, his chin resting on her head.
In the darkness, the momentum felt different. It was no longer just the forward thrust of creation or the defiant stand against gossip. It was the quiet, certain acceleration of two people stepping onto a public stage, hand in hand, knowing the lights were about to come up. The heart behind the glory was a complicated, fragile, and fiercely protected thing. And it was almost ready for its close-up.
And it was almost ready for its close-up.
The final week was a blur of minute adjustments and sleepless nights. Roz’s world had condensed to the smell of linseed oil and the critical appraisal of shadows beneath a cheekbone. Ally’s recovery had progressed to full-contact training, and the difference in his body was palpable; the careful fragility was gone, replaced by a restless, coiled energy he struggled to contain in the stillness of posing.
He arrived one evening smelling of grass and winter air, a duffel bag slung over his shoulder. He watched her in silence for ten minutes as she meticulously applied the final, hair-thin lines of gold leaf to the scar on his painted knee, a tiny, defiant celebration of damage repaired.
“Everyone thinks we’re sleeping together,” she murmured, not pausing her precise work.
“I know,” he murmured back.
She finally looked up, her brow furrowed. “I mean, you are drawing me half dressed and you did gold leaf my scar,” he laughed softly, gesturing to the canvas. “On that note. You’ll be unveiling it all—the paintings for the SRU and the National Portrait Gallery—and I’ll be officially back. And I thought I could take you away for the weekend. After. If you want.”
Roz looked at him, the fine brush hovering in her hand. “To actually sleep together?” she murmured.
“If you want to, beautiful. We have been waiting a very, very long time.”
“You are very patient, Alasdair Fraser.”
“I’ve been very, very patient,” he smirked, the expression exactly the one she’d failed to capture weeks ago, now perfectly understood.
The easy humor in his voice dissolved the last of the studio’s tension. She placed the brush down, the click of the handle against the jar a final punctuation. Her hands were stained with ochre and gold. His proposal hung in the air, a tangible new shape in the room full of finished canvases.
“Where?” The single word was a capitulation, a release of a breath she felt she’d been holding since the locker room incident.
“North. A friend’s cottage near Loch Rannoch. No press, no teammates. Just a fireplace, a massive bed, and a view that’ll hurt your eyes it’s so pretty.” He stepped closer, his training gear rustling. He didn’t touch her, respecting the space around her like it was still sacred. “We can just be. No narrative.”
The promise was so starkly simple it ached. She nodded, unable to form another word. He leaned in then, finally bridging the gap, and kissed her forehead, a chaste press of lips against skin dusted with tiredness and focus. It wasn’t a prelude to passion; it was a seal.
“Finish your masterpiece, MacDonald,” he whispered against her skin. “Then I’m stealing you.”
He left her then, the ghost of his kiss and the scent of cold air lingering. Roz turned back to the portrait. She saw it completely now, the whole story. The calm, the patience, the fierce, protective joy in the slight curve of the lips she’d just perfected. It was him. It was them. It was ready.
She cleaned her brushes with methodical care, the ritual closing the chapter on the work. The gala was a doorway. The weekend was the unknown landscape beyond it. For the first time, the pounding in her chest wasn’t from fear, but from a thrilling, terrifying anticipation. The momentum was no longer about surviving the gaze of others. It was about stepping, willingly, into a shared and private future.
The Murrayfield gala was a collision of worlds. The air, usually thick with sweat and Deep Heat, now smelled of champagne and perfume. Roz stood in a simple black dress, feeling like a speck under the vaulted ceilings, surrounded by rugby dignitaries in kilts and women in glittering gowns. Her paintings, dramatically lit on easels around the room, looked like foreign dignitaries themselves—powerful, silent, and slightly out of place.
Ally found her by the scrum painting, his hand a warm, familiar pressure on the small of her back. “You’re vibrating,” he murmured into her hair. He looked sharp in a dark suit, the one he’d worn for his first cap photo, but his eyes kept scanning the room like he was looking for a gap in the defensive line.
“I feel like I’m about to be tackled,” she whispered back, forcing a smile for a passing sponsor.
“Later, maybe.” His joke was a lifeline. He squeezed her waist. “They’re magnificent, Roz. They’re seeing it. Look.” He nodded subtly toward a group of senior board members, who were studying the intimate portrait, their expressions shifting from polite interest to genuine contemplation.
The unveiling ceremony was a blur of speeches. Roz’s own words, about capturing the duality of strength and vulnerability, sounded distant in her own ears. Then the curtain dropped fully, revealing the main portrait. A collective, soft inhalation moved through the crowd. The painting didn’t boast. It commanded a quiet, unnerving attention. In the front row, Grezza shifted uncomfortably, his usual bravado muted.
The questions started the moment the formalities ended. A journalist thrust a recorder toward them. “Ally, the portrait is remarkably personal. How was it, being perceived so intensely by the artist?”
Ally’s arm tightened around Roz. “It was a masterclass in seeing,” he said, his media training kicking in with a layer of unmistakable sincerity. “Roz doesn’t just look at the surface. She finds the story underneath.” He glanced down at her, his public mask softening for a second. “It was a privilege.”
Later, as a jazz band started up, Grezza lumbered over, a whisky in his hand. His face was flushed. “Alright, you two? Painting’s bonny, Roz. Really.” His tone was an attempt at his old joviality, but it fell flat. He looked at Ally, then away. “Listen, about before… in the locker room. Out of order. I was a dick.”
The apology hung there, awkward and heavy. Ally just looked at him, waiting.
“It’s fine,” Roz said, the lie automatic and professional.
“It’s not,” Ally said quietly, not to her, but to Grezza. His voice held no anger, just a final, clear boundary. “But we’re moving past it. Don’t be a dick tonight, eh? I’m off duty.” He took Roz’s hand, his grip firm. “We’re leaving.”
They slipped out a side entrance, the cold night air a shocking relief. The silence between them was full of the evening’s echoes. He drove north, the city lights dissolving into inky darkness and the occasional ghostly glow of a lone farmhouse. Roz rested her head against the window, the adrenaline leaching away to leave a profound exhaustion.
“You were amazing,” he said, his eyes on the winding road.
“You used the word ‘privilege,’” she replied, her voice thin.
“Because it was true.” He reached over, his hand finding hers in the dark. “Every second of it.”
The cottage was a stone silhouette against the loch, revealed by his headlights. Inside, it was all rough-hewn wood and overstuffed furniture. A fire was laid in the hearth. Ally built it while Roz stood at the wall of glass, watching the moon silver the water. The only sound was the crackle of kindling and the shift of his clothing.
He came up behind her, not touching, his reflection looming in the dark window beside hers. “Hi,” he said.
She turned. The distance between them in the quiet room felt vast and infinitesimal. All the talking, the posing, the performing, was done. Here, there was nothing to narrate. She reached out and touched the lapel of his suit jacket, then began, slowly, to undo his tie. He watched her fingers work, his breath deepenin
The silk slid loose with a whisper, and he let out a slow, controlled breath. His hands came up to cradle her face, thumbs tracing the arches of her cheekbones as if memorizing them by touch. "Tell me what you need," he murmured, his voice rough-edged, stripping away the last of the evening's performance.
"I need you out of this suit." Her own voice surprised her, low and steadier than she felt. "I've been looking at you for months. I want to touch."
A smile ghosted across his lips. He shrugged the jacket off, letting it fall to the floor without a glance. The dress shirt followed, buttons yielding under her now-confident fingers. The firelight carved the landscape of his torso in gold and shadow—the dense muscle of his shoulders, the pale slash of the scar on his ribs from a long-ago match, the flat plane of his stomach. This wasn't the patient, still subject from her studio. This was life, pulsing under her hands.
He was utterly solid, a wall of warm, resilient flesh. She placed her palms flat against his chest, feeling the strong, rapid beat of his heart. "You're real," she whispered, more to herself than him.
"Completely." He bent his head, kissing the line of her jaw, her throat, each touch a soft, lingering brand. His hands slid down her spine, finding the zip of her dress. The fabric pooled at her feet, a puddle of black in the firelight. He drew back just to look, his blue eyes dark, absorbing. "Jesus, Roz. You're so beautiful it actually hurts."
A shiver ran through her, part chill, part sheer exposure. He saw it. In one fluid motion, he scooped her up, her body so slight against his fully recovered strength. He carried her to the large, worn sofa, laying her down on the soft wool blanket. He didn't cover her body with his, not yet. Instead, he knelt beside her, one knee on the floor, and began a slow, deliberate exploration with his hands and mouth.
He kissed the hollow of her collarbone, the inside of her wrist, the delicate skin behind her knee. He mapped her with a reverence that felt like a form of conversation, his touch asking silent questions her body answered with tremors and sighs. This was his own kind of artistry, and he was taking his time, learning her composition. Every scar, every curve, every hidden sensitivity was noted with a patience that felt infinite.
"Ally," she breathed, her fingers tangling in his dark hair.
"Mm?" He lifted his head from the soft skin of her stomach.
"I'm not going to break."
"I know you're not." He shifted, finally stretching out beside her, his skin hot against the length of her body. The full, hard proof of his desire pressed against her thigh, but he held himself still, his gaze locked on hers. "But this isn't the pitch. This isn't a collision." He brushed her hair back from her forehead. "This is the first time. I want it seared into my memory. Every second."
When he finally entered her, it was with a slow, inexorable pressure that made her cry out, a sharp sound lost in the crackle of the fire. He went utterly still, buried deep, his forehead damp against hers. "Okay?" The word was strained, a gasp.
She nodded, speechless, her body stretching to accommodate him, a full, breathtaking ache. He began to move then, a rhythm that was all gradual intensity, deep rolls of his hips that built the feeling layer upon layer. There was no frantic rush, only this profound, gathering tide. His eyes never left her face, reading every flicker of pleasure, every wince of overwhelm.
She clawed at his back, her short nails digging into the dense muscle, anchoring herself as the sensations spiraled. He caught her whimpers with his mouth, his kisses messy and deep. The world narrowed to this: the scent of woodsmoke and their sweat, the rough wool under her, the incredible, solid weight of him moving inside her with a perfect, devastating friction.
"Look at me," he rasped as she began to fray at the edges, her body tightening. "I want to see you."
She forced her eyes open, drowning in the blue of his. The calm she had painted was gone, replaced by a blazing, unprotected rawness. It was the roar, finally, and it was for her alone. That unraveled her. The climax tore through her in long, silent waves, a radiant suffocation that clenched around him, pulling a guttural groan from his chest.
He followed her over, his own release a shuddering collapse into her arms, his big body trembling with the force of it. For a long time, the only sounds were the fire and their ragged, slowing breaths. He shifted his weight, but didn't withdraw, keeping them joined as he gathered her against him.
Her face was pressed into the sweat-damp hollow of his throat. She could feel his pulse gradually calming under her lips. Outside, the loch was a sheet of black glass under the moon. Inside, the fire painted their tangled limbs in shifting light. The narrative, the noise, the world with its expectations, felt like a distant and irrelevant dream.
He finally stirred, brushing a kiss to her temple. "Well," he said, his voice a wreck of its usual self, laced with a deep, satisfied humor. "That was a hell of an unveiling."
A laugh hiccuped out of her, unexpected and light. She traced the scar on his ribs, the one she now knew by taste as well as sight. The gala, the portrait, the months of tension—it all fell away, leaving only this new, quiet truth between them. The momentum had carried them here, to this quiet shore, and for now, it was content to let them simply be, adrift in the aftermath.