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, trying not to blush more. "I wouldn't want to like—insert myself," he says, vaguely. "It's already, ah, a lot to be trusted to paint you in it, so." He goes back to his easel, concentrating on colors to limit his embarrassment. Despite the unexpected kink—ha—in the direction of the painting, he still wants it to be primarily warm and soft. He wishes he'd chosen a room with a fireplace, but he can transpose the sunlight slanting across Laertes' face redder; deepen the shadows around him to create something of that firelight effect anyway. He starts mixing golds and reds, browns and purples and muddy greens.

[timebethine]

Laertes does his best to sit still and let Shen Yuan work, but curiosity swiftly overcomes him. "Art thou close friends with Sagramore?"

[peaklordshen]

Shen Yuan smiles at his canvas as he finishes his underpainting wash and sketches in the basic shapes of Laertes' face—the line of his jaw and throat, bisected with the collar; his brow; the shape of his nose. "I am," he says. "Though I fear he's been a better friend to me than me to him, lately—I've found myself repeatedly relying on him, and he's only barely allowed me to return the favor."

[timebethine]

"He does that," says Laertes, rolling his eyes. "The most generous of men, who shows his hurts less than a cat. Thou must persist in showering him with kindness, or he'll wither in silence."

[peaklordshen]

Shen Yuan instantly picks up his pencil and starts furiously sketching elsewhere on his canvas to try to capture the look in Laertes' eye - not the eye-roll, but the moment of endlessly fond knowing just after it. "I'll do my best," he promises. "Last time we saw each other—before the fight with the dead, anyway—we were at least mutually miserable. We, uh, took a nap together." Is that a weird thing to tell your friend's husband??

[timebethine]

"It gladdens me to hear it," says Laertes, and the look in his eyes softens further, as though the fondness he feels for Sagramore has extended to Shen Yuan in turn. "Nothing makes me happier than to know that he's well-attended with friends."

[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.