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 shrugs. "Not your fault," he says, but he's abruptly not in a painting mood. He in favor of skating over on Xiu Ya to hover in front of Magnus. "Can I sit with you?"

[summerdude]

"Yeah, of course," says Magnus. He sits up a little straighter, scooting to make sure there's enough room for Shen Yuan. "Please."

[peaklordshen]

Shen Yuan steps up next to him and then sits with a sigh, their shoulders brushing together. Xiu Ya spirals down into its sheathe and comes to a rest next to his painting supplies.

He kind of wants to tell Magnus about his dream--his sister's voice at the door. He kind of wants to explain that the idea of his family moving on from his death and the idea of them not moving on from his death are equally terrifying, but one of them has to be true. Eight years.

But--he doesn't want to be a bummer, and it seems like Magnus is already kind of going through it. So he just says, "I wonder if you could learn to sword surf. If Jack would let you, anyway."

[summerdude]

"Nah, I'd pass out," Magnus says; his tone makes it clear that he knows this intimately. "I mean, he can fly me, but anything he does uses my own strength and it all hits me when I pick him up again. Feels like I did whatever it was he accomplished. So flying is like I, like, literally picked myself up and carried myself through the air."

[peaklordshen]

"Oh, damn," says Shen Yuan. "That sucks." He glances sideways at Magnus. "You must have had a bad time after the zombie fight."

[summerdude]

"Yeah, it wasn't great," Magnus laughs. "I'm surprised you didn't stumble across me, actually, I picked him up in the middle of a hallway. It's fine, though, Hanguang-jun and Galahad found me."

[peaklordshen]

"Oh," says Shen Yuan, flushing. "Yeah, um. Sorry I didn't, like. Come make sure you were okay. I didn't know you got such backlash, and I was... distracted."

[summerdude]

Magnus gives Shen Yuan a piercing look, then laughs again. "Loverboy?" he guesses. Then he shakes his head. "Don't worry about it, man, I'm fine. It's all good."

[peaklordshen]

"Still," says Shen Yuan, disgruntled. "We're friends, I should have your back, and not let myself be seduced away by beautiful men just because they use my sword in battle and it's, like, really hot and intimately charged. Not that—we didn't—we just took a bath. Separate. Baths. There's a room at the back of the Mansion with a bunch of screens—Anyway." He subsides. "I'm rambling."

[summerdude]

"Bro, I'm fine," says Magnus, who demonstrably has not been, lately. "Everyone has my back here, basically. Did some good fighting when the zombies were here, and some good damsel-in-distressing afterwards." He nudges Shen Yuan with his shoulder, and then decides to Helheim with it and wraps his arm around Shen Yuan's back, pulling him in for a little tree-cuddle. "My post-battle existential crisis is not on you, my dude. I want to hear more about these totally innocent baths."

[peaklordshen]

Shen Yuan allows himself to be cuddled, glad of it both because it's nice and because it means he doesn't have to look at Magnus while he talks about this. He knows he's not really sixteen, but the cognitive dissonance is easier when he's cuddled into him like this and can't see his face. "Those zombies were gross," he says, "and I cut the sleeve off my date outfit to bind up Sagramore's shoulder, so I was kind of looking a wreck, but I, like. Really like Binghe, obviously. So we just kept hanging out while also taking baths." He sits up, a little. "And it really was mostly innocent. Way more innocent than I expected, actually, but I think maybe Binghe is trying to figure out, like. Not living in erotica world anymore?"

[summerdude]

"Sagramore got hurt??" Magnus asks, thinking, and didn't ask me to heal him?

And then: "Erotica world?" He pauses. "Because of all the wives?"

[peaklordshen]

"Oh, I mean, kind of? The wives are a symptom of the erotica thing. I told you I got sucked into another world, right?" He's certain they touched on this when he was hight. "It was a fictional one. Binghe's literally from an erotic web novel, I know the guy who wrote it."

He doubles back: "And Sagramore's fine, I've seen him since. I got worried he might turn, because, you know, zombies, but they weren't that type, I guess."

[summerdude]

"They weren't any type I'm familiar with," Magnus agrees. "I had to heal Claudius. And," he sighs. "Lancelot."

[peaklordshen]

"I still haven't even met Lancelot," says Shen Yuan. "I kind of intend not to. He sounds like he extremely sucks, and there are enough people here now that I simply don't have to hang out with people who suck." He does kind of want to see Lancelot, though. He imagines he kind of looks like dilf Galahad, which is obviously deeply compelling.

[summerdude]

"Oh, he's the worst," Magnus says, enthusiastically, with all of the energy of someone newly able to unleash all of their feelings on a person mutually detested. "I hate that guy. Motherfucker doesn't know how lucky he has it that I've committed to not killing him even though if they ever decided to give me a moniker in Valhalla it should probably be Bad Dad Destroyer."

[peaklordshen]

Shen Yuan blinks. He's not sure he knew Magnus had, like, killed people, or at least not people who weren't like him and came back immediately. But destroyer seems pretty final. Huh. "Yeah, I don't think Galahad would like that," he says. "There's a lot of room to play around in between killing someone and treating them nicely, though."

[summerdude]

"Oh, I know," Magnus says, to both of Shen Yuan's points. "Mostly I try to avoid the guy. But you can see how it was super annoying to have to heal him, right?"

[peaklordshen]

"Totally," says Shen Yuan. "You're very brave. I don't suppose next time you could heal him but like, also give him poison ivy or something, could you?"

[summerdude]

"It doesn't work like that," Magnus says, a little sadly. He leans his head against Shen Yuan's shoulder. "But enough about that dude."

[peaklordshen]

"Right," says Shen Yuan, his hand coming up automatically to pet Magnus' head. "...What were we talking about before him?"

[summerdude]

"Zombies, destiny, Luo Binghe's erotica world," Magnus says, promptly. "Hey, do you think I'm the age I was when I died or age of the number of years I've existed?"

[peaklordshen]

"Number of years you've existed, definitely," says Shen Yuan immediately, because that's what he is, and he doesn't know why it should be different for Magnus just because he got to keep his own body.

[summerdude]

So far the only consistency Magnus has been getting is that he's not sixteen. "How old are you?"

[peaklordshen]

"Twenty...six?" says Shen Yuan. "Twenty-seven? One of those. I was, like, in the process of turning twenty-two when I died, and then I was in Proud Immortal Demon Way for like five years. So yeah, twenty-seven. Although it's fall now, so maybe I'm twenty-eight?" He looks down at himself. "My body's—actually, I have no fucking idea how old my body is. Piece of shit cultivated to immortality, so he could've been anywhere from thirty to like, four hundred."<sup>1

1</sup> He was 35.