semi-open post: portraiture

[peaklordshen]

After shifting his way through oil pastels, watercolors, house paint, colored pencils, and an endless variety of paint markers, Shen Yuan has finally managed to get the Mansion to produce a decent set of oil paints, and—wonder of wonders—an easel. He's set up in a spacious, well-lit hall, probably for dancing or salons or whatever, where he's arranged a bunch of furniture in various configurations—wooden screens that he's draped cloth¹ over for backdrops; armchairs stolen from the lounge, wooden stools and high-backed dining chairs from the kitchens; even a lovely chaise lounge in a deep purple that he wistfully thinks he won't actually use, because it would definitely be for Aleksander, and he doubts he'll be doing that entry in his protagonists of the Mansion series after all. He has one of the stools pulled up next to the easel to hold his paints, and is wearing a wide-necked sweater over a black turtleneck and some loose, worn jeans that already have a few flecks of paint on them from when he was doing his color tests.² He's pulled his hair back in a practical bun, and he's currently laying down a layer of gesso on his canvas.

¹ Look, he has to do something with all of those robes he accidentally conjured in his last post.
² After days of feeling very lost and confused about how he's not required to LARP anymore, he's pretty much decided that it actually means he can just change who he's LARPing as at will, and the main way to do this is through fashion. Today he is An Artist.

[Primarily for those Shen Yuan has offered to paint, but anyone else is also welcome to come bother him while he works.]

Comments

[peaklordshen]

Shen Yuan captures this softening, too, or tries to; tries to get the angle of his mouth right; a hovering thing, like the smile is just above the lips rather than actually curving them. Like the feeling of another person's skin a hair's breadth from yours, the knowledge that at any moment there could be touch, at any moment the expression on Laertes' face could break through to full joy at the thought of his husband.

"I've promised to take him flying again," he says, hoping to convince the smile to land, "on my sword. I told him we could practice beheading those on the ground, in case we ever face another horde of the dead."

[timebethine]

"Flying!" Laertes laughs, delighted, and rakes his fingers through his hair unconsciously as though to settle it after a wind-tossed ride. "He must have been enraptured by it. He loves nothing better than a ride, and such a ride it must have been!"

[peaklordshen]

"Stay still," Shen Yuan chides, automatic and a little sharp. Although, he kind of likes this new fall of Laertes' hair better--which just makes it more important he doesn't mess with it again.

[timebethine]

Laertes immediately stills again, and schools his expression to solemnity. He can't resist asking, though, "Did thine experiments with plants yield their intended fruit?"

[peaklordshen]

"You can talk, and laugh, and stuff," Shen Yuan clarifies. "This isn't a life-drawing class. You're not being paid for it, for one thing. Just don't -- mess." He licks his lips, giving up on pencil and getting back into paint, changing the shape of the hair he'd blocked in earlier. "And--um. Yes. Sorry I was so--was I weird to you? That night?"

[timebethine]

"I believe Magnus would say thou wert 'going through it,'" says Laertes wryly. "But at least thou hast arrived."

[peaklordshen]

Shen Yuan laughs, a little despairing. "Going through it," he mutters, and shakes his head. "Has anyone really ever arrived? If I have, it's not where I intended to go, when I--launched myself, that night. I'm not complaining, to be clear, I vastly prefer where I am now to where I thought I would end up, but I think it's just--a more pleasant road than I was on before."

[timebethine]

"A wise answer," Laertes says. He flashes a quick grin, but it fades as he absorbs the implications of what Shen Yuan has said. "Often, I have so gloried in my triumph in banishing one error of thought that I've fallen headlong into others. Thy way is better."

[peaklordshen]

Shen Yuan had definitely not been talking about his thoughts, but this is the first time anyone's ever called him wise when he wasn't just making up bullshit to sound like an immortal master, so he'll take it.

He's pretty sure he has arrived in his thoughts--gay man, check. Fucking idiot for ever thinking otherwise, check. If there's more to that journey, he doesn't want it, thanks. What would it even look like?? He's already traversed the Kinsey scale from end to end, with Susan a helpful checkpoint in the middle. He really should go thank her now that things are more settled.

He paints for a while in silence, but he's still thinking about what he actually had been talking about: his relationship with Luo Binghe, and specifically its pace. He opens his mouth, then huffs a little laugh. "I would ask your advice, bro, but I'm not sure you're the one to go to about how to move slow in romance."

[timebethine]

"I am not," Laertes admits. "I could counsel thee as I would my sister, but I think thou wouldst appreciate the lesson no more than she does."

[peaklordshen]

At the mention of Ophelia Shen Yuan feels a stab of guilt, which is totally unfair—it's not like he wrote Hamlet. He wishes he'd managed to avoid telling Claudius about that, but at least it seems like Claudius has avoided telling Laertes. He casts around for something to say that isn't I'm sorry; for an indiscretion Laertes doesn't know about and a loss that hasn't even happened.

"I have a younger sister, too," he says, after a slightly too long pause. "I can't imagine giving her any kind of relationship advice—firstly because that would mean admitting she's old enough to have relationships, when clearly she's ten years old and will be ten years old forever."

[timebethine]

"Exactly! Thou seest perfectly; in a brother's eyes, a younger sister is always at least half a child." Laertes's expression turns rueful. "I think I would guard her less jealously, here. She's a fine, honest, sensible woman. In this place, where all are of equal station, she would more than hold her own."

[peaklordshen]

"I hope she does show up here," says Shen Yuan, fervently. For Laertes' sake, and her own. "She sounds great."

[timebethine]

"Tell me more of thy sister?"

[peaklordshen]

"Ah, I wish I had more up to date information to share," Shen Yuan says, with a little wince. "I hadn't seen her in five years even before I came here. She, um, thinks I'm dead, and I haven't really been in a position to correct that impression. But last I knew she was eighteen, and way smarter and more interesting than I've ever been, and she wanted to go to college for fashion design."

[timebethine]

"Say for me again how thou camest to be thought dead," says Laertes. "If thou didst tell me before, I was in no frame of mind to hear it. I think I'd understand thee better now."

[peaklordshen]

"I'm not sure I ever really tried to tell you, before. Not in a way where I expected to be understood," admits Shen Yuan. "I came to be thought dead because I am dead. I think if we're being very technical about it, I'm a ghost inhabiting the body you see now, though I didn't choose to be." He pauses. "Not that I would prefer to just have reincarnated back on earth, not after everything I've gained in my second chance at living, but I wouldn't have chosen this body, from the world it is from."

[timebethine]

Laertes inhales. He's conscious that, two months ago, that would have been an impossible thing to hear--but he's summoned light into his hand, and fought the shambling dead, and suddenly there are more things in Heaven and Earth than he could have imagined. "Then Luo Binghe is from thy second world, and not thy first?"

[peaklordshen]

Shen Yuan nods, then remembers Laertes can't see him without turning his head, which Shen Yuan has forbidden him from doing. "Yeah," he says instead. "He used to be fictional, to me. The protagonist of a novel I was reading when I died.¹ Actually—" this, apologetically, "—most people here used to be fictional, to me. Including you. I wasn't sure what Shakespeare play you were from, when I arrived; I only figured it out once I placed Claudius, and then realized the two of you were from the same world." Even now he's not really sure what Laertes does, in Hamlet (probably because he's not in either the Lion King or any famous paintings). He reworks the shape of Laertes' jaw and hopes it's more than 'be sad about his sister'.

¹ Wow, not even specifying hate-reading. This IS personal growth.

[timebethine]

"Thou knowest the play," says Laertes slowly. Despite himself, he sits further forward in his chair. "Forgive me--I'm afire to know how my sister fares in it."

[peaklordshen]

Ah. Fuck. "I don't know it well," Shen Yuan says, quickly. "It's just quite famous, in—my original world? The future?" He doesn't know if Hamlet is one of Shakespeare's historical plays or not. He doesn't think so, but if it helps Laertes to think of it as being based on his life rather than he himself being written, like Binghe believes about Proud Immortal Demon Way, that's fine. "I told Claudius this, but I primarily know it from very loose adaptation—a children's movie, with songs, where the primary players are all rendered as lions." He's avoiding the question, hoping to distract, but he feels bad about it. Would it be better to tell him? He's probably going to find out eventually, especially now that Claudius knows, but—maybe someone else can deliver that particular news?

[timebethine]

"Well--how fares my sister, the lioness?" Laertes asks. It's something. It's more than he had before.

[peaklordshen]

Shen Yuan relaxes, a little, though he feels a stab of guilt for doing so. "Well," he says, truthfully. "Her name in it is Nala, and she and Simba--that's lion Hamlet--end up together. She helps him defeat Scar--that's Claudius, who's the villain of the piece." He carves the curve of Laertes' brow in light and shadow and jokes, lightly, "You know, having spoken with him here, I'm beginning to think maybe the children's movie version of the story loses some of the complexity and nuance of the original. But he does get all the best songs."

[timebethine]

"He would," says Laertes, with a fond roll of his eyes. It eases his heart, to know that his suspicion was correct: the play does indeed feature the courtship of his sister and Prince Hamlet. He doesn't particularly like it--the prince is a scholar more than a warrior, but still given to his father's volatile moods and sudden outbursts of violence--but at least it's a comprehensibly unpleasant fate. "Do I feature in it? I suspect not; had I not been whisked away from mine own world, I would have swiftly returned to France, and left the scene of the play entirely."

[peaklordshen]

Shen Yuan shakes his head. "You're not," he says. "But I do think you're in the play, though maybe just to give the romantic advice we talked about your sister disliking so much, earlier." If he weren't, he couldn't be here, either—arguably, he wouldn't exist.