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“I still can’t believe Selphie sucked you into her fundraising play,” snickered Seifer as Quistis focused on untangling her costume. Yes, untangling. She knew how the recreated Centran garment was supposed to look, but for the life of her she couldn’t make the circular breastplate lie in such a way that the chains and loops of fabric that made up the rest of the “dress” would actually cover anything. Seifer perched on a stack of costume totes nearby, eminently unhelpful and grinning/leering at Quistis as she sat in her underwear and tried to figure the costume out for dress rehearsal. All around them, everyone else was already getting into makeup. It had taken Quistis a bit to get used to the co-ed dressing and makeup room, but no Garden student was truly body-shy and everyone knew better than to make situations with semi-naked and highly trained mercenaries even the least bit weird. So really, it was no different than dressing for gym aside from the occasional blush and eyebrow waggle.
“You got sucked in too,” Quistis groused, giving her costume a frustrated shake in an attempt to loosen some of the knots that were about to form in the fabric scarves. This would have been so much easier if anything actually detached from the breastplate, but nooo.
“Hey, I volunteered,” said Seifer, preening over his own costume. Like Quistis’s, it was a Centran recreation, but covered considerably more skin and was much easier to get into. Color-wise it was similar to Quistis’s, but then again their characters were supposed to be fraternal twins.
“To be the villain?”
“Hell yeah.”
“Why?”
“Come on, it’s fun to twirl your mustache sometimes.”
Quistis looked flatly at Seifer’s clean-shaved face, his features made sharper and more distinct with deft applications of stage makeup. She had to admit that his eyes being lined in black wasn’t exactly a bad look on him, even if it did make them preternaturally large and almost glowing.
“Well, can you at least decide on a consistent method of killing me later?” Quistis shook her costume and said, “The last time is what caused all THIS mess.”
“Hey, you said you wanted Irina to put up more of a fight before the end.” Seifer tapped his cheek, where the heavy cake makeup also covered a healing bruise. “And I told you ‘not the face’. Turnabout’s fair play.”
“Five minutes!” Selphie shouted into the dressing room. “Actors, you all ready?”
“No!” Quistis shouted among a chorus of yes’s. Selphie poked her head in, looking mock-severely over the dark, round-lensed glasses she’d taken to wearing since deciding that a play would be the perfect addition to this year’s Garden festival.
“What’s wrong, Quisty?”
“I can’t get this damn thing—“ By now, she had been fighting with it for nearly twenty minutes and not making any headway in figuring out which way things went. Tears pricked her eyes as Quistis realized that a stupid piece of fabric was getting the best of her and she had to steel herself against hurling it to the floor.
“Fujin!” Selphie shouted, making everyone in the dressing room jump even as she yelled down the hall. “Costume emergency!”
“AFFIRMATIVE,” came floating back down the hall.
“Here, gimme,” said Seifer, holding out his hands. “I’m not doing anything and you still need to get your face on. I can’t make it worse, right?”
“If you do, you’ll be answering to Fujin,” said Quistis, all but shoving the costume into Seifer’s hands. She was so irritated that even the brief touch of his fingers against hers didn’t elicit the usual spark of attraction, which made their in-character interactions both fascinating and semi-disturbing for the audience. Since that was the angle the legend and Selphie’s interpretation were going for, however, it was perfect when Seifer and Quistis let just a little bit of their real-life attraction seep through. But not too much, because that would make people look strangely at them all the time and both of them didn’t have time for that mess.
By the time Fujin arrived, Quistis had lined and shadowed her eyes and was putting on foundation to cover up any loose sweeps of powder. From her spot at the long makeup counter with its even longer mirror, she could see the pale-haired woman beelining for Seifer. Since being appointed Costume Boss (her own title, which seemed much better than ‘Mistress), Fujin had taken to wearing a bandolier of every possible costume fix, and pins and needles glinted in lines down her chest while various sizes of scissors bounced on her hip like daggers.
“TANGLED?” She said to Seifer.
“Yeah, I don’t even know how she did this,” said Seifer, sounding both annoyed and amused as he kept turning the fabric over and over in his hands.
“YES. SHE,” said Fujin dryly, which made Quistis smirk as she smeared grease paint on her face. Everyone remembered the knock-down, drag-out ‘death scene’ from the last rehearsal, with most people laying bets if Quistis and Seifer would try to kill each other or run off someplace to screw after it was done. They’d done neither; Seifer had run away to tend to his face while Quistis had done laundry, because of course the one day she’d fall and expose her underwear was the one day she’d be wearing hot-fucking-pink.
“Hey, she messed up my costume too.”
Fujin rolled her one eye and briskly sorted the costume out, though it appeared even she was stymied at a certain point. As the other actors left the dressing room for their places, Quistis finished up the rest of her base face and Zell at last swooped in to add the finishing touches. Anybody who thought it was funny for stocky little Zell to have such a talent for putting on makeup ran the risk of either a punch in the face or a slanted liner brush to the eyeball. He hopped up onto the counter so Quistis was sitting between his knees, a position that normally would have looked suggestive except for the fact that this was a theater dressing room and this was the most expedient way to get close to someone’s face. Quistis was so tall and Zell’s torso was so short that he barely had to lean down to contour and add blush to her face. Fortunately Quistis’d had the presence of mind to do her hair up in the show style before trying to get dressed, so that wouldn’t have to be worried about.
“Okay, close your eyes,” said Zell, and then threw what seemed like a grenade’s worth of setting powder onto Quistis’s face. She was prepared for it this time and didn’t accidentally inhale any like the first time Zell had finished off her makeup, holding her breath until the clouds of powder settled. As Zell brushed excess powder off her eye area and then slid off the counter to go wash his hands, Quistis got up and jerked as she felt the cold metal breastplate of her costume clap unceremoniously onto her chest.
“A little warning, Fujin?” Quistis gasped, but there was a masculine snicker from in front of her instead. Of course Seifer would want to hold a breastplate onto her breasts.
“AFFIRMATIVE,” said Fujin from her back, and Quistis felt her arm being manipulated as Fujin masterfully slid it into the various fabric loops that made up one ‘sleeve’.
“Stop jiggling it,” Quistis snapped as Seifer as he started wobbling the breastplate up and down.
“Hey, I want to make sure it’s secure.” He paused and then added with a leer she could hear, “But it’s not like there’s a lot of play in this area anyway, so I guess you’re fine.”
Why did he always insult her breasts in public when he enjoyed getting his hands on them so much in private? Quistis rolled her eyes as she opened them, and as she saw Seifer grinning down at her, got a terrible little idea that made her smile back. And that made him lean back warily as Fujin fitted Quistis’s arm into the other side of the costume. But they didn’t say anything, because the alarming sound of Fujin ripping fabric made them both jump.
“One minute!” Selphie shouted from the main stage area.
“FIX LATER,” said Fujin, tying knots at Quistis’s neck and the small of her back. Gathering up the costume’s skirt (which was thankfully one solid piece), she told Quistis to step into the resultant loop of fabric and then pulled it up to cover Quistis’s legs and behind. A few cleverly concealed safety pins kept the skirt up where it needed to be and Fujin gave Quistis a pat on the shoulder as soon as she was satisfied. “DONE.”
“Thank you so much, Fujin,” said Quistis, heaving a sigh of relief. Fortunately the stage was just across the hall from the dressing room, and she and Seifer left briskly together.
“Wait a second,” said Seifer, grasping her arm as they neared the stage door. They had a little ritual before they went out, provided nobody was around to see it. But instead of the usual thrill in the pit of her stomach as Seifer leaned down to kiss her, Quistis grinned in an entirely different anticipation and held up her hands. Deftly in the semi-dark of the hall, she poked right under the nose and with precise flicks of her fingertips, drew a curling villain’s mustache through his stage makeup. Immediately Seifer recoiled. “Hey, what the fuck—“
“Places,” Quistis said cheekily and then darted through the stage door to get onto the set. Seifer growled but followed a short step behind and later, Selphie told Seifer that if he wanted a villain mustache for real, he needed to go big or go home.
So for the show, Seifer put on the most enormous golden bristle of a horsehair mustache he could find, and Quistis had to dab extra makeup around her mouth to hide the scrapes it gave her later.