From Dust to Dust - Plot Point 2

[piper90npcs]

Who: Everyone on the Dust to Dust Mission
What: The hires and their daemons attend a fancy party and follow up on some mysteries.
Where: A ballroom on the mission.
When: After From Dust to Dust - Plot Point One
Warnings/Notes: None yet.

Comments

[wheyoftheadept]

Saturday takes the brush from him, hands it to Midnight, and grabs a different one. The goat chews it, meditative as a mafioso with a fine cuban cigar. She casts around for a pallette of the right shade without anything remoately like the pleasure with which she arms for battle.

"No, I learned from someone who actually liked this stuff. You want any of the paint, tho? It can help, looking a little not like yourself."

She paints as she talks, sharpening the edges of her face. Then she glances up at him from under her hair, smoky-eyed and mischievous.

"Mind you, I don't think people are gonna see your face that much. Mostly they'll be talking to your pecs." Honestly, she's impressed they found something that covered all the modest bits.

[garmr]

Well, that is certainly one dastardly look levied his way. Saturday's getup was already pretty nice without the paint on, but even Guts could see how the make-up accented her face. It was pageantry, sure, but it wasn't like the gaudy, dramatic nobility of Midland.

"I've never used any paint before," he admits quietly, "Never had a reason to."

He can't even say he'd dislike it any more than he dislikes dressing up in general. He's already stuck in a stuffy suit that they miraculously found to fit him - what's one extra addition?

[wheyoftheadept]

"Well, it's not really useful except for things like this," she says, waving the brush around and yanking it away from Midnight before he can bite. "Doesn't seem like you do a lot of this kind of work. Not sure what I could do - be a lot of work just to smooth out those scars... then again..."

She tilts her head, seriously examining him. As an artist would a canvas.

"Your lines honestly don't need much work, it's just your skin's rough. A little kohl to bring out the eyes, maybe something to define the mouth. And the eyebrows need a brush. I mean. If you want to try it."

Why should she suffer alone?

[garmr]

His lines??? Guts stares blankly back at Saturday like she's speaking another language, but he doesn't balk at the suggestion. One glance at the mirror leaves him observing his own face more closely. It is the first time that he'd noticed his scars had actually subsided quite a bit, with a year of never needing to touch the Berserker armor.

He touches the scar of his nose absentmindedly, perhaps out of old habit.

"If you think it'd help the mission, sure. As long at doesn't end with an eye drawn on my face, or somethin'..."

If it were anyone but her, he might feel like he was walking into somebody's elaborate prank.

[wheyoftheadept]

"A'ight, siddown." Saturday stands abruptly, picking through the supplies, and begins an elaborate process that involves holding various beiges up to his face and then rejecting them based on criteria she doesn't bother explaining.

"Okay, do you have any scars you think are particularly cool, and want to have stand out? 'Cause otherwise I'm just gonna even out your entire skintone and smooth things out a bit."

[garmr]

He sits, that big and bulky form of his looking a little comical on a tiny stool. Now Guts’ face is within easy reach!

At the question, he considers the thought. Concealing scars was just never a thing that ever came to mind…

“Kind of a hard ask. Scars are s’pposed to be like trophies for mercenaries.”

He gestures to the faint line he’d been touching earlier - the clean cut of a steel blade marked on his face long ago.

“Guess I’d keep this one. It’s been with me long as I could remember.”

[wheyoftheadept]

"Sure, but beauty wants asymmetry to be on purpose." She's quoting her best friend. "Let's see now..."

Saturday hasn't spent a lot of time really looking at Guts' face; she knows it, of course, and can read some of his subtler moods, but she hasn't actually ever sat down and examined it properly. It's much nicer then she'd thought. With him up so high above she'd never gotten the chance to see his eyes before, or any of the finer details. They were really nice eyes. Pretty - no, beautiful, actually. Observing that shouldn’t be weird. This whole exercise was about beauty, after all.

“You have really pretty eyes,” she tells him, to prove this isn’t weird and she doesn’t feel strange or all-over warm about cradling his face so intimately. “And like the most perfect mouth I’ve ever seen, this is unfair.”

She begins smoothing foundation over his cheekbones while she speaks.

[garmr]

"Hey now, you don't got to flatter me or anythin'..."

Guts looks stricken with a gentle surprise, though he stays still between the warm hands on his face. As Saturday begins to work on his cheeks, he realizes that he can't quite remember ever getting a compliment on his appearance. On his strength and killing prowess, certainly, but his face? No. Beauty was never a quality given to the Black Swordsman.

Despite not typically caring for such things, it felt nice... coming from a friend. And maybe he lingers longer than he should when she looks closer. The dark of his eye is warm, the way it is when he is only concerned with frivolous and jovial things. The corner of his mouth turns upward into a little smile.

"If I don't scare off any princesses, it'll be an improvement already."