Completed Old Made New (Rue)

[Colt]

Their eyes met for a brief, piercing moment, and Shahar’s heart fluttered against his will. But then her eyes were moving again, looking at his words, and then a small, gentle giggle escaped from her throat. It made him realize that he had never seen her smile before, had never seen her display amusement or joy; it was a pleasant surprise, one that made Shahar feel like he’d accomplished something.

Her giggle turned into a full laugh, and Shahar reflected her without thinking. He let out a chuckle of his own, although it could hardly be called such; there was no sound to accompany it, just the quiet rush of moving air and a subtle bouncing of his shoulders.

She agreed strongly. I suppose you might prefer something less revealing.

Yes, please, Shahar replied with warm amusement.

The hunter looked down at the bright blue tunic, realizing that it would probably be more difficult to get off than it had been to get on. Still, he had to try; Shahar began at the bottom, which was the loosest area, pulling it up awkwardly and trying to get it over his head. The side effect, however, was that he could no longer see, which made it a hundred times more difficult when he lost his grip on the cloth. He got it back soon enough, but by then he was no longer sure exactly what part of the shirt he was gripping. Abandoning that train of thought altogether, Shahar ended up going to the bunched-up fabric at his ribs, rolling the garment higher and higher until he managed to get his head free. From there, it was a simple matter of getting his arms out.

Shahar realized that, in his difficulty, he had turned the entire tunic inside out. Blinking sheepishly, he spend another moment rectifying it before he handed the thing back to Rue.

Apology.

[Naiya]

A soft shaking of his shoulders was something Rue almost overlooked until mirthful eyes explained that maybe it was a laugh from the oft silent man. Confirmed by the warm amusement in his signing, she wondered what caused this man to laugh so, and beyond that, to speak so little.

She was still trying to put that together in her mind when she turned back to him, only to find he was once more bare, if not entirely shirtless. The overly snug material had caught at the broadness of his shoulders, tangling around itself as material shifted on loose planes and stuck to tighter ones.

Had things been different she would have moved to help him, or even if she was the same girl she had been a year ago with everything else the same she would have helped him. The girl she was now couldn't abide the thought that if she touched him, or even just his clothing, surely someone would see and draw the wrong conclusions.

Besides, she longed far too greatly to touch, the hard lines of his torso and the smaller lines of the scars on his arms, to allow the temptation to come so close.

No. She shook herself, the chiding voice in her hand sounded awfully like her father, that was the sort of thinking that would get her into trouble. Heat flooded her face at her lack of civility, and she turned away, pulling her hair over her shoulder so that she could twist the strands between her fingers.

She peeked back over her shoulder to find he had escaped the grasp of the shirt, although he looked as embarrassed as she felt while he turned the cloth right side out. She took the material, looking down at it as she smoothed it across her body to free the last of the wrinkles before she laid it across the mess that was the display.

Apology? Confusion, why would he apologize. A frown slipped across her face, a small furrow between her brows, as she assured him No need to apologize. She avoided looking at him though, as much as she could, while he stood waiting for the next size to try.

"Maybe this one." She said her voice hopeful. She offered the deep red one, thinking the color suited him much better than the last. She gave him another view of her back as she sifted through the display looking through the mess of fabrics and colors, and... was that a skirt?

[Colt]

Confusion, she said in reply. No need to apologize.

The young woman took the shirt gracefully and smoothed it out, returning it to its home on the display. She seemed uncomfortable, although Shahar could not fathom why; in his short years of memory he had gone about shirtless more often than not, and so it didn’t even occur to him that his bared skin could be the source of her distress. Mystified, Shahar did his best to appear respectful as he took the second shirt.

This one was far easier to slip into; the collar was larger, for one, and even had a convenient slit a few inches down the front to allow for more space. The sleeves were bigger, too, although they hung a bit looser than Shahar would have preferred before they bunched up neatly at the wrist. He couldn’t help but feel like he had pillowcases on his arms, but that wasn’t a pressing matter; the tunic fit, this on much better than the first, and though it felt like it would be quite comfortable to wear for long periods of time he knew that the underbrush of the grasslands would devour the sleeves before the season was over. But if this was for size, the sleeves didn’t matter anyway; he could ask for one with smaller sleeves later.

This one is better, he signed before realizing that she wouldn't see him while her back was turned. Shahar paused, unable to explain his sudden nervousness, but overcame it after a moment's hesitation.

"Rue," he murmured out loud.

[Naiya]

There was a long moment after he called her name during which she was sure her heart had ceased beating entirely. Only once it had resumed beating, erratic though the beat was, did she turn to face him.

The sight nearly floored her. He was stunning in the tunic, though it was slightly large through the arm, the cut of it was beyond complimentary to his shape. The 'V' of the neck was deep enough to show the hard shapes of the muscle beneath, but the length drew the eye up, towards his green eyes that stood out starkly so close to the deep red of the dyes.

The sleeves added a sort of mystery, covering his toned arms, and in a better size sleeve they would just hint at what lay beneath. The cut across his chest was not tight, but it hung close to his body and fell towards his hips so that it was at just the right length.

Speechless, she finally managed to say, drawing her mind together hardly long enough to say even that.

[Colt]

For a moment, Shahar wasn’t quite sure she’d heard him. There was a long gap in between her name and her response, but after a few moments she did, in fact, turn around. Then there was another pause, another long while of nothingness as Rue gawked at him, similar to how she had gawked at his hand. Again Shahar found himself looking down, trying to find whatever it was that had stunned her to such a degree and half-expecting to find some horrid monster on his chest. But again, as it had been with his hand, he could find nothing wrong; the shirt looked the same as it had before he had put it on aside from the fact that he was the one now filling it, and yet Rue’s gaze travelled up and down the length of his upper body as if it was the strangest thing she had ever seen. The hunter was left to gaze back at Rue silently, mystified.

Speechless, she finally said, causing Shahar to look down once more for the source of such a state. And once more, he found nothing.

Blinking in bemusement, Shahar rose his gaze to meet hers.

Why? he asked, confused beyond measure. Does it not fit? He’d thought it had, but he was no tailor, and it occurred to him that since he’d never worn a tunic like it before that he might somehow be doing it wrong. It is backwards?

[Naiya]

Rue shook her head, a soft smile pulling at her lips as she searched for the words to explain. Embarrassment coloring her posture and her cheeks.

"It suits you." She finally told him, and though it caused her far more embarrassment she added, "You look handsome." Was he unaware of his good looks? Or maybe the color was so wrong in his mind that he could not imagine that it complemented him.

She gestured him to the mirror, an extravagance suited to the shop, with the intent to show him what had caused her stupor.

[Colt]

She didn’t respond immediately, although embarrassment crept into her features quickly enough.

“It suits you,” she said after a few moments. A pause. “You look handsome.”

Handsome. That was a word that struck Shahar as peculiar. It wasn’t that he was unfamiliar with it; though he was a man of few words, he was adept at listening to those around him, and he had heard such a word often enough. It was, as near as he could figure, a compliment given to another person, or sometimes an animal, and was used towards males as the word beautiful was used towards females. One whose appearance was unusually pleasing to the eye, attractive in such a way as to bring pride to the recipient of the title. A compliment, one that Shahar had never in his life thought to apply to himself.

It wasn’t that he hadn’t received compliments before; he’d been told he had a good sense of an animal’s thoughts on the few times he had hunted with others, and had once been complimented on his strider’s large size. But compliments had never been his strong suit in the first place, and even then it had been an awkward affair to accept the praise gracefully. “Handsome” was a word that had no meaning between hunters, unless they were talking about their prey, and so it struck him as almost alien in how strange it was to be meant for him. He was unused to attention, negative or positive, and so his own posture became a messy combination of embarrassed and grateful.

Rue pointed towards a looking glass nearby, large enough to see at least half of his body, and he went towards it curiously. Perhaps that would provide some insight as to why she had titled him as “handsome.”

The man that stared back at him from the mirror almost startled him in the unbroken quality of the image. Shahar had looked into calm water before, sometimes large amounts of it, but he had never in his life seen himself in a real mirror. Was that… really him? The person in the mirror was a stranger, someone he had never seen before that wore the same tunic as he did. The mirror itself was almost magical in what it showed him, and terrifying in its implication; he had never seen his own face in such detail, and to do so now was unnerving. Shahar found that even a few moments was difficult to handle; he turned from the mirror and back to Rue, who he had seen before and was a different person, who made her own motions and was more familiar than the man in the mirror.

I… thank you, Shahar said. This tunic is nice. But I don’t... his posture became once again embarrassed and perhaps a tad uneasy, although he tried his best to hide it.

That… the looking is… difficult. I'm sorry. Thank you.

[Naiya]

It was one thing for a girl to look in her mirror and think she was undeserving of being called attractive, because girls often thought in comparisons. It was hard to measure up to a comparison, and so this sort of response was what Rue had come to expect when she peered into a mirror with them.

It was another thing entirely to see a man look so bewildered by the thought that he was handsome. Men are not compared to one another out side of competition, their looks not judged against another's nor their value measured in comparison to another. It bread in them a confidence women lacked.

Yet there was a distinct unease in him after her words, growing only more obvious as she watched his image reflected back at him. It drew from her confused sorrow as he apologized to her.

She stepped closer to him, holding her breath as she edged past him until she faced the mirror, his form a line of tension beside her.

"Let me show you." The statement carried no heft, drifting into tones of question even as her body formed the request.

[Colt]

His words caused sorrow in her––although Shahar could not fathom as to why.

And then, without warning, Rue stepped closer, and the tension was back. Shahar’s breath hitched in his throat as she came shoulder-to-shoulder, turning to face the mirror alongside him. It forced him to look back at the thing, back at the man that was so unnerving in his similarity to Shahar––because he was Shahar, and that was one thing to comprehend and another thing to understand––adding her own reflection to the mix. Shahar couldn’t suppress the feeling of presence that came from the reflections, tricking him to think that there were four people in the room instead of two. But with her reflection against his, it became a bit less surreal; her appearance was once he knew, and seeing two Rues was less alarming than seeing a stranger and knowing that that stranger was him.

He was acutely aware of the heat Rue gave off, even in the midst of summer. As before, the heat filled the space between them until it felt like it was boiling over, sending adrenaline up and down that entire side of his body. He could feel her shifting in sign, even as he heard her voice.

“Let me show you.”

He looked at her through the mirror, at the eyes of her reflection, and tilted his head. He could look at her far more easily than he could look at himself.

Inquiry, said his body. Curiosity. Then, acquiescence.

[Naiya]

She waited, aware of the tightening in her stomach and the increasing tempo of her heart, but pushing them aside so that she could focus on Shahar instead.

Look here. She signed, reaching across him both without touching and without obscuring his view, a feat of balance she hadn't need employ in what seemed like ages. She traced delicately the sides of the cloth where they settled along his chest waist and hips, lining the shape of him without quite touching. Here is respect for self and others, she told him. "The lines here are straight and fitted, not the flare of a gut grown soft with age and disuse." Her voice was gentle, hardly more than a whisper. Fitted to show care for yourself and those under your care.

She moved slightly, tucking the slight excess of fabric in the sleeves until they sat properly along his arms. And here, dedication. "The work you do is hard, and there is pride in the ability to do it."

And more. See here, this is pride. She leaned across him again, aware of the burning heat between them, of the racing of her heart in her chest, but again she pushed it away, intent on impressing upon him an understanding.

Her hand danced above the neck of the tunic, tracing the shape of it in the air close enough to feel the electric tingle of his skin there, but not. Pride in care of oneself. It brings the eyes to masculinity and strength found here. Once more her hand moved, up from the collar to the stubble lined shape of his jaw, tracing it too with the touch-that-was-not.

She was stretched across him then, with his height and her attempt not to block his view, but she stretched further yet. Most importantly, here. This is kindness. She moved to highlight his cheekbones and the eyes set above them, but her strength was not what it used to be, and her balance lacking even more. She pitched forward, a small step to gain her balance, knocking her against him.