I already loved this part of the regency AU, but it’s made even better by knowing where it approximately sits in the chronology. The Zen-rejection chapter isn’t out yet, but I’m thinking this has to be after – or maybe even just before? BOTH ARE GOOD. But I’ll assume it’s AFTER since Shirayuki isn’t feeling the DEEP GUILT and letting herself touch Obi.
His worn white shirt had only a few dry spots, translucent against his skin all across the breadth of his back.
Listen, I’m just sitting here laughing, because she’s going into this all like BETTER GO TAKE CARE OF OBI THIS IS FINE, WE ARE VERY PLATONIC EVEN WHEN WE ARE NOT, and it’s like, girl you took one look at him without his overcoat and your first though is that his shirt is see-though and plastered to his back.
With careful fingers, she touched his chin to turn him better into the light. He was pliant to her adjustments, the skin of his face smoother than she expected. He closed his eyes as she drew near, skin stretching smoothly over cheekbones she’d never seen the like of anywhere else. He was usually so animated, layering faces as his antics warranted, that to see him calm and waiting like this was mesmerizing. The urge to explore was irresistible. “Where does the pain start?” She ran a finger along the corner of his mouth, his lips tightening infinitesimally.
look at this child, trying to pretend this isn’t an already charged moment. She’s just like, of he’s so pliant, letting me touch him, his cheekbones are so nice, without him making stupid faces I can see how nice his face is, MAN IT IS JUST REALLY HARD NOT TO TOUCH HIM WHEN HE’S GOT HIS EYES CLOSES AND LETTING ME, WE ARE DEFINITELY FRIENDS.
Her fingers seemed magnetized to his skin, a conscious effort required to lift her fingertips and reach for her ointment.
GIRL. I mean like, this is so entirely Shirayuki, just ignoring that different tension between them – I mean, her feelings for him are so natural, so slow-growing, that even with those fraught moments between them before, those moments of MORE, I can just believe she really hasn’t like…examined herself. Like, yes, Obi is very attractive! This is a fact she knows. It makes her heart beat fast sometimes, but they are friends, so this is fine! One time she thought about kissing him in a greenhouse, BUT WHO WOULDN’T. It’s fine. THIS IS FINE.
She swept her thumb across his cheekbone, so smooth, the punctuation on his infuriating grins and statue-like silences, and was struck by a wish to run her lip across it, to feel its smoothness with her own.
IT’S NOT FINE AT ALL, IS IT, STEVE?
Her breath hitched, then puffed out in surprise, and she could feel the air against her lips where it was captured at his face, she was so close. They'd been close before, a timely catch, a powerful leap, but never had she felt this need to touch him. His hair brushed the edge of her fingers and she shifted her hand, work-reddened skin against his perpetual gold that neither winter nor illness faded.
Only an inch further, all it would take. She could hear his breaths by her ear, close in time with her own.
Everything goes from “this is fine we’re friends” to OH NO I WANT TO KISS HIM, and I just love how it’s not even something that does anything more than startle her. Zen made her go into a tizzy, but she’s sitting here with Obi, being like, I COULD CLOSE THIS DISTANCE AND KISS HIM, and although it’s a SURPRISE, she’s like, oh. Oh okay. This is…a thing I’m feeling. This is something I’ve maybe been feeling for a long time. This is maybe part of the reason I told Zen no, and I’m only now realizing it. OKAY. I can…work with this.
His jaw tensed under her fingers. “I don't know who I am.” There was a full stop at the end of the sentence, a danger sign Shirayuki couldn't miss. His tone was tight, his body poised, coiled for flight. She sat back, and he turned to face her, eyes still closed. “Everyone I've ever been is a lie.” She thought of the dandy highwayman, the rough bandit, the shirtless groom. All Obi, and what she'd always seen was someone with boundless talents.
I just really love this answer from him – this is how he’s been feeling since he was titled, since he was FIRST given something he didn’t deserve. And he came to terms with that, since it didn’t bring him more responsibility, although it probably makes hi squirm when he lets himself think about it. But you can tell this has been percolating since she rejected Zen. Obi isn’t oblivious, he’s seen the way the wind is blowing, and he knows if she closes that space, that will be it. First it will be a kiss, and then they’ll be married, and then it will be a LIFE, and he isn’t what she thinks he is. He’s never been HIMSELF, or at least who he thinks of as himself. Maybe he’s been most himself in front of her, but he’s not this cultured person she’s come to know, someone who should rub elbows with lord and get married to a displaced noblewoman.
His smile settled into something almost wistful. “Have you ever worn silk against your skin, miss? It's an experience.”
Buddy, if you’re trying to reject her, this is like the entirely wrong question to ask.
Shirayuki had nothing to say. She’d made him uncomfortable, and he talked to distract her. This was not the first time it had happened. It was, however, the first time she’d almost kissed him. He shrank under the waiting, and at last she had to look away.
OF COURSE she thinks she made him uncomfortable with the almost-kiss. I mean, she probably thinks he’s letting her down easy; she’s never been good at reading people about THIS. Maybe she wanted to kiss him, but clearly he didn’t feel the same. And now he’s doing the good old ‘it’s not you it’s me’ and they’re BOTH squirming through it.
“I’ve been a criminal all my life, been a robber, a fraud.” He paused for a breath. “A murderer. Don’t believe anything I tell you, miss. I’m just nobody.”
“Or maybe you have that reversed.” She met his eyes again; his were hurt and desperately trying not to be. “A man who can be anybody. That sounds very freeing to me.” She looked to the corner of her little cottage, seeing an inn in Tanbarun, a life she could have kept were she not who she was.
I love that this is her feeling on this whole thread of protests – sure, he’s never just been one person. But that’s a talent; she can only be who she is, she can’t just…pick up something wholesale, sight unseen. Obi can. And even in all his different guises, there’s been a thread of HIM, and THAT is whole he is to her. That’s what matters to her. But of course he can’t see that, not when he feels like he’s constantly remaking himself to be the person he’s supposed to be, when he’s trying to be the person that DESERVES this.
“I don’t know how to be what you want me to be,” Obi whispered at last. His hands were clenched in fists too tight for her to unravel.
“You don’t have to be anyone for me. Just you.” The silence resumed, thick and oppressive.
UGH this is just…so the both of them. Obi admitting he’s lost when it comes to knowing what she needs him to be, and Shirayuki trying to explain she’s only ever needed him to be HIM. And he can’t even parse this because he’s never been who he IS – who he WAS – in front of her. Even as a bandit, he has his pretty words and nice clothes, and that’s…not who he was born as. She doesn’t know that his family line can only be traced in the gutter. And she’s the LAST PERSON who would care, but it matters to HIM; things that are given can always be taken away, and that’s how he sees his life with her, how he sees everything he’s been given since he fell into this world.
And Shirayuki is just…trying to figure out the problem here. It was easy to think of this as the gentle let down, but this is clearly so much MORE, this isn’t about HER, it’s about HIM, and she’s just…trying to help. Trying to make him understand that he shouldn’t feel LESSER, that if he’s worried about what she thinks of him, then he should know she thinks the WORLD of him – and of course, that’s the worst thing she can tell him. All he thinks is that his deception has been complete, because if she REALLY knew, she’d never associate with him. I just can’t wait to see how that all comes out, because it is not going to be an easy road, but Obi has another thing coming if he thinks Shirayuki is going to be deterred by some shady past or whatever.
I have a complicated relationship with this story. I'm proud of it, it was outside my comfort zone, but fitting it into the greater story has been such a bear. I'm still not convinced everything is consistent in terms of Shirayuki. And I'm still hoping I'll figure out a way to resolve it one of these days.
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Sabraeal on Chapter 10 Fri 08 Jun 2018 02:16PM UTC
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Sabraeal on Chapter 10 Fri 08 Jun 2018 02:17PM UTC
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Sabraeal on Chapter 10 Fri 08 Jun 2018 02:17PM UTC
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Eclectic80 on Chapter 10 Wed 11 Jul 2018 10:54AM UTC
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