Tangible Schizophrenia

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Author: Guede Mazaka
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Ned/Maria
Feedback: Anything from spelling errors to character analysis.
Disclaimer: Not mine.
Notes: For the cues May challenge, though somewhat impressionistic. Done in exactly twenty-seven minutes plus three minutes to look up a line from A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Apologies if that counts as over the time limit.
Summary: Some weeks into the new world.

***

It was May and the flowers in Desdemona’s hair had been fresh and wild, for all that they were left-overs from the admirers of last night. They had kept in a chipped glass jar of water till the morning, and aye, till midway through the performance when her dresser had had time to peep at the crowds, pick out the notable lords and have a notion flash into his head. King’s patronage or no, it was clear that doubling and tripling their backing was always a fine thing, and those flowers would be a pretty artifice with which to curry favor with one noble who sat prominently where he could stare into Maria’s bodice.

So in went the flowers in her hair, stems stabbed through so that she had cursed like a fishmonger’s wife. Up until the last moment he was twisting the blooms in her locks and whispering about possibly tearing her shift during the last scene. But she had quieted that idea with a look; he might have been made a little nervy by his precipitous booting from the stage, but she had suffered equally as much by her insistence on being thrust on it, and she had been the one to con how to live where she had found herself. If he wished to experiment that far, then he had better find his own way back before the tiers of theatre-goers.

Most of the flowers had been torn from her hair or knocked out of it, but a few still remained. Crushed little things, all warped and broken by the force of the performance as, in truth, she always secretly felt herself to be inside. Every night she died on stage, and every morning she was revived with the anticipation of facing her doom once more.

“No, no, you ham-fisted fool.” The hands doing up her laces were rudely brushed away and other, more dexterous ones replaced them. They picked their way lightly through the tangle of whalebone and ribbon, smoothing her shattered self into a suitable frame in which she could receive their public.

Ned had wiped his face and changed his clothes, but a smear of bootblack had escaped his attentions. It glimmered darkly in the candlelight, reflected at Maria by the mirror before, and gave him a rakish look that was entirely at odds with his serious treatment of her laces.

He caught her watching him and smiled half-way, suddenly nervous in the manner only she saw, for many had seen him fully dressed but only she’d seen him in full undress. But his hands never faltered, fingers never tripped themselves. They were the faintest sensation through the stiff corset, a far cry from the gripping brutal heat they had been pressing through her shift only minutes before.

When he was done, Maria rose and turned to look at him. His hand fluttered to and fro before her, a thumb’s width from her body, as he gave her a critical examination. “A very comely dream for his lordship.”

She snatched his fingers, stilled them. Then she stilled his flinch of realization by putting her hand to his face.

It was crowded in the dressing room and it was no place for revealing the secrets of the trade, so almost immediately she drew her thumb across his cheek, rubbing hard so the black came off. Then she wiped off her hand on a rag, dusted her palm across her skirt before remembering it was finery and not her old workdress. “Indeed, and so he might find he has but slumbered and his stay has yielded nothing.”

Sharing was new to Ned, and so resentment and, said the uncertain relief in his face, drawing a hand smoothly but firmly down the side of a woman. Though he let Maria guide him but once before he tugged away his wrist and slid his palm like so over the curve of her hip and the flat of her belly to rest lightly beneath her breast. She felt it as if all the people around them were gone and the stiff layers of clothes under his hand as well, and as if they were naked and alone together.

“How now, my lord?” she whispered in Desdemona’s voice.

“Gently, I think.” He lingered a moment by her side, eyes dark and wavering as the streak of black on his face had been, before leaving her to the mountain of wealth and leer bowing through the low doorway. It was a moment longer than the night before.

Gently indeed, she smiled at her feet, and the petals in her hair slowly sifted themselves loose to cover where he had stood.

It was May and the flowers in Desdemona’s hair had been fresh and wild, for all that they were left-overs from the admirers of last night. They had kept in a chipped glass jar of water till the morning, and aye, till midway through the performance when her dresser had had time to peep at the crowds, pick out the notable lords and have a notion flash into his head. King’s patronage or no, it was clear that doubling and tripling their backing was always a fine thing, and those flowers would be a pretty artifice with which to curry favor with one noble who sat prominently where he could stare into Maria’s bodice.

So in went the flowers in her hair, stems stabbed through so that she had cursed like a fishmonger’s wife. Up until the last moment he was twisting the blooms in her locks and whispering about possibly tearing her shift during the last scene. But she had quieted that idea with a look; he might have been made a little nervy by his precipitous booting from the stage, but she had suffered equally as much by her insistence on being thrust on it, and she had been the one to con how to live where she had found herself. If he wished to experiment that far, then he had better find his own way back before the tiers of theatre-goers.

Most of the flowers had been torn from her hair or knocked out of it, but a few still remained. Crushed little things, all warped and broken by the force of the performance as, in truth, she always secretly felt herself to be inside. Every night she died on stage, and every morning she was revived with the anticipation of facing her doom once more.

“No, no, you ham-fisted fool.” The hands doing up her laces were rudely brushed away and other, more dexterous ones replaced them. They picked their way lightly through the tangle of whalebone and ribbon, smoothing her shattered self into a suitable frame in which she could receive their public.

Ned had wiped his face and changed his clothes, but a smear of bootblack had escaped his attentions. It glimmered darkly in the candlelight, reflected at Maria by the mirror before, and gave him a rakish look that was entirely at odds with his serious treatment of her laces.

He caught her watching him and smiled half-way, suddenly nervous in the manner only she saw, for many had seen him fully dressed but only she’d seen him in full undress. But his hands never faltered, fingers never tripped themselves. They were the faintest sensation through the stiff corset, a far cry from the gripping brutal heat they had been pressing through her shift only minutes before.

When he was done, Maria rose and turned to look at him. His hand fluttered to and fro before her, a thumb’s width from her body, as he gave her a critical examination. “A very comely dream for his lordship.”

She snatched his fingers, stilled them. Then she stilled his flinch of realization by putting her hand to his face.

It was crowded in the dressing room and it was no place for revealing the secrets of the trade, so almost immediately she drew her thumb across his cheek, rubbing hard so the black came off. Then she wiped off her hand on a rag, dusted her palm across her skirt before remembering it was finery and not her old workdress. “Indeed, and so he might find he has but slumbered and his stay has yielded nothing.”

Sharing was new to Ned, and so resentment and, said the uncertain relief in his face, drawing a hand smoothly but firmly down the side of a woman. Though he let Maria guide him but once before he tugged away his wrist and slid his palm like so over the curve of her hip and the flat of her belly to rest lightly beneath her breast. She felt it as if all the people around them were gone and the stiff layers of clothes under his hand as well, and as if they were naked and alone together.

“How now, my lord?” she whispered in Desdemona’s voice.

“Gently, I think.” He lingered a moment by her side, eyes dark and wavering as the streak of black on his face had been, before leaving her to the mountain of wealth and leer bowing through the low doorway. It was a moment longer than the night before.

Gently indeed, she smiled at her feet, and the petals in her hair slowly sifted themselves loose to cover where he had stood.

***

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