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rainbowfic2023-08-07 09:49 pm
ilthit) wrote in rainbowfic2023-08-07 09:49 pm
Kohl #9: Wedding Garments (Lin Moniao Series)
Name: Wedding Garments
Story: Lin Moniao Series (AO3 link)
Colors: Kohl #9: Blush
Supplies and Styles: gift wrap (supply), life drawing, mosaic (styles)
Word Count: 1,433
Rating: teen
Warnings: Mention of past violence, current injury, daddy and mommy issues, reference to past parental abuse, internalized and societal queerphobia, and a fairly toxic codependent relationship.
Also contains: Gender issues, swearing, repression, guilt.
Summary: It's Shen Shanwei's wedding night. His bride has been stabbed. And yet this story is mostly about his complicated feelings about crossdressing.
Note: #10 Stage Makeup would have been even better for this one but I did that one already! This storyverse, which is co-authored withminutia_r , is based on the Righteous Blood, Ruthless Blades wuxia TTRPG, though both characters are my OCs. It is part of the ongoing long storyline of the trials of the Illustrious Qilin Villa sect. It is in fact a spoiler--we haven't yet published the surrounding events, though they have been written.
***
"I'll put out the light, then." Shen Shanwei moved to rise up from his kneeling position, but his wife reached a hand out from the bed and touched his knee, stopping him.
"Little Flower." There was fondness in her voice, though her eyes were hazy with drugs and exhaustion. The little medication she had agreed to take had worked to dull the pain, it seemed, leaving her sleepy and soft. For the moment, there were no accusations, no suspicions, no agonies of jealousy.
He realized, not for the first time, that he was the only person who got to see the terrifying Master Yuwen like this, and it made his chest ache with a confusion of affection and guilt. His eye wandered to her bandaged chest. His fault--that, and so many other things.
He swallowed it down.
"Little Flower," she said again. "I still want to see… You promised."
"You're hurt, and you need to sleep," he protested. "It's not that important. Some other time."
"What other time?" She clucked her tongue. "Tomorrow--might be another enemy. Or you'll decide to throw it out, or give it away, because we'll be crawling over with sect brothers and juniors again. This-- This is our time, now. Do it now."
His throat had gone dry. He tried to swallow around it. "It won't be any good. I won't be pretty. I could do it at fifteen. It'll probably look stupid now."
"Yeah, you said." She attempted to laugh, but it stopped at a sharp in-drawn breath. "But you promised."
"...Alright," he said, because what else could he say, when she insisted?
(How could he say anything else, when he knew what he had done to her?)
So he went to the tailor's delivery box that had held their wedding clothes, now torn and bloodied and bundled away in the corner, and pulled off the lid. His throat closed up entirely for a moment and he closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and forced himself to look.
Why had it seemed easier in the daylight to lie and say there was a cousin of his coming to the wedding, who needed an appropriate outfit, and could more or less be modelled on his proportions with a little more generosity around the chest and hips? The tailor had probably guessed who it was really for, and at the time Shen Shanwei hadn't cared. Plausible deniability had been enough.
Why did he care now, especially considering all the far more terrifying things he had done earlier that day? He had just spoken his birth name out loud for the first time in ten years. What difference would it make if everybody knew he was that deviant son of Sergeant Yang's who had run away all those years ago? What could his father do to him? He was an adult, and it appeared he had an entire sect of trained warriors who would run to protect him, whether he wanted them to or not.
The door to the room was latched. He knew that, and would not run off to check. He was just being ridiculous. Shen Shanwei refused to be ridiculous. So he opened his eyes, let his held breath out in a puff, and pulled the dress out of the box.
It was a light, effervescent thing in a modest pale yellow and green, with embroidered ribbon at the collar and on the belt. It was soft in a way men's clothes never were. He ran his fingers over the embroidery and the sensation tingled all the way up his wrist.
"Fuck," he mouthed. He could almost smell the inside of the carriage of the theatre troupe he had travelled with as a teenager, feel the same excitement layered with dread whenever he knew he was going to go out on the stage and search for his father in the crowd.
He touched the light fabric again, and remembered his home, much, much younger, the sound of women's voices talking, laughing, arguing, and his aunt tugging his belt in place, with the fine clothes for the dancing at the spring festival, advising him on what not to do and what to remember and to never speak to strangers.
He looked at his hands, long-fingered and angular. He liked his hands, but they did not go together with something as pretty as this dress. He... wanted it anyway. It was a selfish and pointless want, like his desire for--for sex, and--for whatever scraps of motherly kindness he could get from Madame Zhu, who had never asked to play that role for him.
Shen Shanwei had spent a lot of time saying no to indulgences of this sort, and stubbornly choosing almost anything other than what he really wanted. It had always felt dangerous to do otherwise.
But this wasn't more dangerous than Hua Yan.
It was just a piece of fabric.
He stood, glancing back at the bed. Then he picked up the light and ducked behind a partition screen, even at the sound of Duyi's huff of laughter. "Yeah, yeah," he grumbled. He didn't have anything she hadn't seen before, but if he was going to do this, he would do it in private, thank you very much.
There were no dainty shoes included in the set; his boots would have to do. But the layers of light cloth fell on his shoulders like old friends. His hands fumbled a little on the ties, but were steady when he pulled up his hair and pinned it in place. The hairstyle was a little hasty, maybe, but this part he'd done fairly often, in private, when he had felt the need to be someone else, and so it was well enough. His mother's comb secured it, and a set of beads and a clasp completed the outfit.
Then he picked up the small box of make-up, bought earlier that day ‘for his fiancée’. Technically not a lie.
It was too dark to see himself very well in the small copper mirror, so he was sparing with powder and even more so with blush, but took care with his lips, brows and eyes, dabbing a little red at the corners. He contemplated adding a huadian, but--that would have been too over the top and theatrical. For him, anyway. Even for a wedding night.
Satisfied with the details, he sat back and turned the mirror, and tried to find in the image staring back either a stranger or a past vision of who he had been, or some other wonderful revelation of who, perhaps, he was meant to be, or could have been, but all he saw was himself with a little paint on and his hair up. Clearly not a woman, but somehow--not wrong, either. Not particularly beautiful, and not particularly strange.
In fact, after all that worry, it was a little disappointing.
He closed his eyes, and thought about being someone else.
"Little Flower?" Duyi called, then after a moment, "Shanwei?"
He opened his eyes and looked at himself again, and smiled. He peered more closely at the mirror, fixed a stray hair, and climbed on his feet to return with the lamp to the bedside. "I thought you would have fallen asleep by now."
"Would I have missed this?" Duyi pushed herself carefully up on her elbows. "Show me, hold the light up."
He let her examine him, but it wasn't until he tilted his head flirtatiously that she reacted, breaking into a smile. "Oh, I like it!"
"It's not that great," Shen Shanwei insisted.
"Do, do... that thing you do sometimes. When you are playing a role."
"Oh..." He left himself go soft, to sit differently, to embody a young maiden, laying his hands modestly in his lap. The fabric felt like a dream around him, and the sight of his own knees wrapped in it sparked something strange satisfaction in his belly; a sense of peace and safety. That, of course, was the danger.
She, too, sparked with something, hunger-like; he knew her well enough to read the way she lowered her chin and tensed her shoulders. "My husband is beautiful," she said, voice rich and low, but then she sank back onto the bed. "Ohhh, fuck that Hua Yan. It's-- it's our wedding night, and I am..."
"Going to sleep, to heal," he finished for her, and leaned down to kiss her forehead. "Rest now."
He rubbed the lipstick off her skin as her eyes fluttered close, leaving him alone with the deep, rolling motion of his thoughts.
Story: Lin Moniao Series (AO3 link)
Colors: Kohl #9: Blush
Supplies and Styles: gift wrap (supply), life drawing, mosaic (styles)
Word Count: 1,433
Rating: teen
Warnings: Mention of past violence, current injury, daddy and mommy issues, reference to past parental abuse, internalized and societal queerphobia, and a fairly toxic codependent relationship.
Also contains: Gender issues, swearing, repression, guilt.
Summary: It's Shen Shanwei's wedding night. His bride has been stabbed. And yet this story is mostly about his complicated feelings about crossdressing.
Note: #10 Stage Makeup would have been even better for this one but I did that one already! This storyverse, which is co-authored with
minutia_r , is based on the Righteous Blood, Ruthless Blades wuxia TTRPG, though both characters are my OCs. It is part of the ongoing long storyline of the trials of the Illustrious Qilin Villa sect. It is in fact a spoiler--we haven't yet published the surrounding events, though they have been written. ***
"I'll put out the light, then." Shen Shanwei moved to rise up from his kneeling position, but his wife reached a hand out from the bed and touched his knee, stopping him.
"Little Flower." There was fondness in her voice, though her eyes were hazy with drugs and exhaustion. The little medication she had agreed to take had worked to dull the pain, it seemed, leaving her sleepy and soft. For the moment, there were no accusations, no suspicions, no agonies of jealousy.
He realized, not for the first time, that he was the only person who got to see the terrifying Master Yuwen like this, and it made his chest ache with a confusion of affection and guilt. His eye wandered to her bandaged chest. His fault--that, and so many other things.
He swallowed it down.
"Little Flower," she said again. "I still want to see… You promised."
"You're hurt, and you need to sleep," he protested. "It's not that important. Some other time."
"What other time?" She clucked her tongue. "Tomorrow--might be another enemy. Or you'll decide to throw it out, or give it away, because we'll be crawling over with sect brothers and juniors again. This-- This is our time, now. Do it now."
His throat had gone dry. He tried to swallow around it. "It won't be any good. I won't be pretty. I could do it at fifteen. It'll probably look stupid now."
"Yeah, you said." She attempted to laugh, but it stopped at a sharp in-drawn breath. "But you promised."
"...Alright," he said, because what else could he say, when she insisted?
(How could he say anything else, when he knew what he had done to her?)
So he went to the tailor's delivery box that had held their wedding clothes, now torn and bloodied and bundled away in the corner, and pulled off the lid. His throat closed up entirely for a moment and he closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and forced himself to look.
Why had it seemed easier in the daylight to lie and say there was a cousin of his coming to the wedding, who needed an appropriate outfit, and could more or less be modelled on his proportions with a little more generosity around the chest and hips? The tailor had probably guessed who it was really for, and at the time Shen Shanwei hadn't cared. Plausible deniability had been enough.
Why did he care now, especially considering all the far more terrifying things he had done earlier that day? He had just spoken his birth name out loud for the first time in ten years. What difference would it make if everybody knew he was that deviant son of Sergeant Yang's who had run away all those years ago? What could his father do to him? He was an adult, and it appeared he had an entire sect of trained warriors who would run to protect him, whether he wanted them to or not.
The door to the room was latched. He knew that, and would not run off to check. He was just being ridiculous. Shen Shanwei refused to be ridiculous. So he opened his eyes, let his held breath out in a puff, and pulled the dress out of the box.
It was a light, effervescent thing in a modest pale yellow and green, with embroidered ribbon at the collar and on the belt. It was soft in a way men's clothes never were. He ran his fingers over the embroidery and the sensation tingled all the way up his wrist.
"Fuck," he mouthed. He could almost smell the inside of the carriage of the theatre troupe he had travelled with as a teenager, feel the same excitement layered with dread whenever he knew he was going to go out on the stage and search for his father in the crowd.
He touched the light fabric again, and remembered his home, much, much younger, the sound of women's voices talking, laughing, arguing, and his aunt tugging his belt in place, with the fine clothes for the dancing at the spring festival, advising him on what not to do and what to remember and to never speak to strangers.
He looked at his hands, long-fingered and angular. He liked his hands, but they did not go together with something as pretty as this dress. He... wanted it anyway. It was a selfish and pointless want, like his desire for--for sex, and--for whatever scraps of motherly kindness he could get from Madame Zhu, who had never asked to play that role for him.
Shen Shanwei had spent a lot of time saying no to indulgences of this sort, and stubbornly choosing almost anything other than what he really wanted. It had always felt dangerous to do otherwise.
But this wasn't more dangerous than Hua Yan.
It was just a piece of fabric.
He stood, glancing back at the bed. Then he picked up the light and ducked behind a partition screen, even at the sound of Duyi's huff of laughter. "Yeah, yeah," he grumbled. He didn't have anything she hadn't seen before, but if he was going to do this, he would do it in private, thank you very much.
There were no dainty shoes included in the set; his boots would have to do. But the layers of light cloth fell on his shoulders like old friends. His hands fumbled a little on the ties, but were steady when he pulled up his hair and pinned it in place. The hairstyle was a little hasty, maybe, but this part he'd done fairly often, in private, when he had felt the need to be someone else, and so it was well enough. His mother's comb secured it, and a set of beads and a clasp completed the outfit.
Then he picked up the small box of make-up, bought earlier that day ‘for his fiancée’. Technically not a lie.
It was too dark to see himself very well in the small copper mirror, so he was sparing with powder and even more so with blush, but took care with his lips, brows and eyes, dabbing a little red at the corners. He contemplated adding a huadian, but--that would have been too over the top and theatrical. For him, anyway. Even for a wedding night.
Satisfied with the details, he sat back and turned the mirror, and tried to find in the image staring back either a stranger or a past vision of who he had been, or some other wonderful revelation of who, perhaps, he was meant to be, or could have been, but all he saw was himself with a little paint on and his hair up. Clearly not a woman, but somehow--not wrong, either. Not particularly beautiful, and not particularly strange.
In fact, after all that worry, it was a little disappointing.
He closed his eyes, and thought about being someone else.
"Little Flower?" Duyi called, then after a moment, "Shanwei?"
He opened his eyes and looked at himself again, and smiled. He peered more closely at the mirror, fixed a stray hair, and climbed on his feet to return with the lamp to the bedside. "I thought you would have fallen asleep by now."
"Would I have missed this?" Duyi pushed herself carefully up on her elbows. "Show me, hold the light up."
He let her examine him, but it wasn't until he tilted his head flirtatiously that she reacted, breaking into a smile. "Oh, I like it!"
"It's not that great," Shen Shanwei insisted.
"Do, do... that thing you do sometimes. When you are playing a role."
"Oh..." He left himself go soft, to sit differently, to embody a young maiden, laying his hands modestly in his lap. The fabric felt like a dream around him, and the sight of his own knees wrapped in it sparked something strange satisfaction in his belly; a sense of peace and safety. That, of course, was the danger.
She, too, sparked with something, hunger-like; he knew her well enough to read the way she lowered her chin and tensed her shoulders. "My husband is beautiful," she said, voice rich and low, but then she sank back onto the bed. "Ohhh, fuck that Hua Yan. It's-- it's our wedding night, and I am..."
"Going to sleep, to heal," he finished for her, and leaned down to kiss her forehead. "Rest now."
He rubbed the lipstick off her skin as her eyes fluttered close, leaving him alone with the deep, rolling motion of his thoughts.
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story: lin moniao series
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Ahaha - and also amazing! But, yeah, I actually do have a chronic illness that includes issues with concentration & reading online (or, indeed, offline), but happily most
no subject
Ahaha - and also amazing! But, yeah, I actually do have a chornic illness that includes issues with concentration & reading online (or, indeed, offline), but happily most
no subject