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 nods. "I, um. I hear it helps to have an accountability buddy. Someone who knows what you're going through, who you can talk to about it. Even just to let them know how much you've had in a week, or whatever. Not so they judge, or even tell you to drink less, but just so you're aware, and not, like, alone in it." This is an offer, but he doesn't want to be presumptuous about it, in case there's something else Sagramore would rather do this with.

[sagramore]

"Thou'rt offering?"

[peaklordshen]

"Yeah," says Shen Yuan. "If--if that's welcome."

[sagramore]

"I-- yes. It would be. I'd appreciate it very much." He squeezes Shen Yuan's hand. "Thou'rt a true bro, know thou."

[peaklordshen]

Shen Yuan privately thinks that anyone who knows Sagramore, like, at all would be happy to do the same, but he likes it when Sagramore calls him bro in such a heartfelt way, so he doesn't protest. He squeezes his hand back. "I meant it about coming to me when you're dealing with withdrawal, too. I don't know if the herb I have will help with all of it, but it eases pain and should help with the part where you can't stop thinking."

[sagramore]

"That would be a mercy, certainly." He's quiet again. To be honest, this isn't the revelation he'd expected -- he'd thought he might talk a little about Asmodean, and then be embarrassed by his own wallowing and move things back to Shen Yuan. Now he's left wondering what else about himself he might have borne like a curse that someone could lifted from him (not that he expects to get over the guilt of half a century of blaming himself for drinking all the time as quickly as all that, but it does give him something to grasp onto that he hadn't had before). That line of thinking is dangerous too -- the part of him that's quick to blame himself immediately turns to well, if you'd just asked someone earlier, you wouldn't be in so much trouble now, would you? so it's still your fault, just differently than you'd thought it was -- but he wrestles that back.

The point is that Shen Yuan isn't disgusted by him, hasn't grown bored with him. Shen Yuan wants to help him as much as he's wanted to help Shen Yuan. Sagramore has only done to him what he was doing to Laertes, holding him at arm's length rather than let himself be seen.

"Thou hast my thanks," he says finally, leaning over to refill his cup at last. "I'm sorry I told thee none of this. I was ashamed."

[peaklordshen]

"No need," says Shen Yuan, immediately. "For the apology or the shame. But I get it—the first and hardest step is admitting you have a problem." He winces at how trite this is, but at least Sagramore probably doesn't know it's trite. He means it, anyway, and hopefully that part comes through. "Especially if you thought it was your own fault, bro. I can't imagine carrying that around all the time."

[sagramore]

"I think," he says carefully, because this still feels self-pitying to admit, "I carry more than a few things I should try to put down."

[peaklordshen]

If Sagramore were a different person, or maybe just in a different mood, Shen Yuan would roll his eyes at him and say gee, you think?? But he's clearly coming to this for the first time, and in this mood would read that as critical when all Shen Yuan means is oh my god yes please put them down!!!! you are so tired!!!!! let yourself rest!!!!!

So he just runs his thumb over Sagramore's knuckles. "Yeah," he says, "I think so too."

[sagramore]

Sagramore lets out his breath, long and slow, and turns to rest his head on Shen Yuan's shoulder. "Thou'rt wise and thou givest wise counsel, my heart."

[peaklordshen]

Shen Yuan flushes at this, glad Sagramore isn't looking at him. He wraps an arm around him, tucking him closer into his side. "I don't know if it counts as wisdom, when anyone from my time could give you the same advice," he says, "but—I'm really glad you trust me to give it. I've felt, recently, that I've been relying on you a lot, and I'm—I don't know. It makes me happy to think I can help with something you've struggled with for so long."

[sagramore]

He feels a pang at that -- just like Laertes, then, as he'd thought. For once, he doesn't say anything, clever or not; he squeezes Shen Yuan's hand instead.

[peaklordshen]

Shen Yuan lets the silence last, for a moment, sipping his wine with his free hand, and then says, "Galahad suggested he and I practice asking for help, together. But we were truth-spelled at the time, and I couldn't make the promise to do it. It hurt him, that I couldn't." He frowns a little. "I think if I could have lied and made the promise, I could have made it true later, and spared him feeling like I didn't want that vulnerability with him. But I didn't, in the moment we were talking about it. That's what I meant, earlier, about comfort, and habit. Sometimes you're just not ready."

[sagramore]

"Aye, it's-- if it didn't affect him, I don't know that it would ever have mattered to me. I've always gotten by as I am. But he--" He sighs again. "He wants me to be well, and I want to be worthy of him."

[peaklordshen]

"You are worthy of him," Shen Yuan says, but in a tone that says he expects this to be ignored. "But—yeah, I get it. You want to be good for him."<sup>1

1</sup>Look, he's edging up on the furry thing, okay?

[sagramore]

"I do," simply.

[peaklordshen]

Shen Yuan relaxes back, a little, against the couch. He's not actually frustrated with this answer, it's perfectly lovely, but now that they've gotten out of high intensity alcoholism talk his brain is, in fact, drifting back to furries.

Like, yes, okay, very sweet, you want to be good for your husband, but like, in a dog way?? Then why was he the one wearing the collar? Do you switch? Are you both dogs, like, of the same pack? Is there a master, then?? You're both sleeping with Claudius, is Claudius the master??? Is that why he was so confident that Lan Wangji was dominant, because they have that in common???

He slips the hand he'd had on Sagramore's back up into his hair, petting him a little, absently.

He'd love a search engine for this, too. Hey internet, how do you ask your bro if he's a furry but in like a supportive way, without blowing up his husband's spot, and oh, also, by the way, neither he nor his husband knows what a furry is, due to being from before the invention of the internet? Though if people have been drawing dog-knights since medieval times, what the fuck does he know about the invention of furries? Maybe everyone used to have fursonas, and then it became like, a lost art, only rediscovered in the late 90s by intrepid software engineers who really loved Lola Bunny from Space Jam and like, Tony the Tiger.

...Shen Yuan may be a little bit drunk.

[sagramore]

Sagramore laughs and reaches over to ruffle Shen Yuan's hair in turn. "All right?"

[peaklordshen]

Shen Yuan nods and leans into his touch a little, like a cat, and then realizes, oh, that's how he gets into this, maybe.

"My mind is wandering," he admits. "Do you think everyone has an animal they're most like? I'm remembering a conversation I had with Claudius, and a sketch I did of him as if he were a lion." He doesn't want to distract Sagramore with the whole adaptation of a play thing, in case Sagramore and Claudius--or even Sagramore and Laertes--haven't had that conversation. Claudius can just live with the implication that Scar is his fursona. He'll be fine.

[sagramore]

Another laugh, this one delighted. "Didst thou so?" And, as Shen Yuan intended, this does cast his thoughts the way of being Laertes' dog, of the peace and certainty that come from yielding his body and his mind to Laertes' control, lying at his feet in obedience. He's not certain that's something Shen Yuan actually wants to know, though, so instead he says, "And thee? Dost thou imagine thyself an animal?"

[peaklordshen]

Shen Yuan shakes his head. "I haven't really thought about it," he admits. If he'd thought about it at all he'd probably have named some standard, embarrassing furry stereotype, like a big buff wolf or something--not because he actually feels anything like that, but because that's what he thought a fursona was, cartoonish bulging muscles and enormous dicks. Completely different from Laertes, warm and casual in Sagramore's(?) collar, asking him to draw beast-headed knights for the man he loves.

Is that prejudiced of him? Has he been prejudiced against furries this whole time?? What, recognizing his own internalized homophobia wasn't enough, now he's gonna find new prejudices lurking behind every corner?

"Probably something pampered and useless, like a housecat," he says, instead of any of that. "What about you?"

[sagramore]

That makes it easy. "A hound," he answers right away. And then, catching up, "--Useless, how darest thou."

[peaklordshen]

Shen Yuan laughs. "I notice you didn't fight me on 'pampered,'" he teases, "and on a day I'm not even wearing seven layers of overcomplicated, hand-embroidered silk." Then, casually, as if this isn't the thing that he's been aiming for all along, "why a hound?"

He likes hound better than dog, and is glad to hear Sagramore phrase it that way. It sounds less like something he could weaponize against himself.

[sagramore]

Sagramore finishes the rest of his cup as he considers this, before settling back against Shen Yuan's shoulder. "All my life I've lived with dogs. In Hungary the king kept agárok and Erdélyi kopók to hunt boar, in Turkey çatalburuns, in Scotland deerhounds -- they're all hunting dogs, hounds. They're skinny and sharp-nosed and they have endurance. They're loyal, and they'll tolerate a great deal. And if they're lucky, they're beloved."

[peaklordshen]

"I like hound for you a lot, then," says Shen Yuan. "I might argue on skinny, having seen your muscle," he pokes teasingly at Sagramore's side, "but otherwise I think this is the only time you've described your own qualities in a way I could agree with—loyal, patient, able to endure much. And certainly beloved."