Work Text:
Running into Cao Chunhua while visiting Shen Yi at his post in the southwest of Great Liang had been a complete surprise, but nevertheless a very pleasant one.
The two of them met on a crowded street of a decently-sized town close to the border. Cao Chunhua materialised next to him as though out of nowhere, eyes shining, artificially red lips curved in a charming smile. They appeared and started conversation so smoothly, acting like the two of them were simply out for a planned stroll and not at all bumping into each other by accident, that it took Ge Chen a bit of time before he realised that his closest friend was here. He then proceeded to sweep them up in a bone-crushing hug.
“People are looking!” Cao Chunhua squeaked, awkwardly gripping his sleeves. “Have mercy on my ribs, they’re delicate!”
Ge Chen laughed brightly and let them go, a huge grin on his face. “I did not expect to see you until the New Year, and you have been hiding here all along!”
“Only for a few days,” Cao Chunhua corrected, corner of their mouth tilting up in a smirk.
“Which makes our meeting even more lucky!” Ge Chen concluded, laying a hand on their shoulder. “You look well.”
“The rain here is doing wonders for my skin,” Cao Chunhua smiled.
The chance meeting turned into an entire ordeal as Cao Chunhua took it upon themself to lead Ge Chen around, hand resting in the crook of his elbow, to various spots around the town. Here a restaurant that served delicious rice noodles with pork and spring onion, there a teahouse offering mengding ganlu tea that was difficult to come by in the capital, grown in a neighbouring province; shops with beautiful, intricately embroidered garments, next to stalls selling wares powered by small amounts of fuel, such as lamps, portable braziers, and even children’s toys.
Ge Chen’s head spun from the new sights. As exciting as it was to wander the town and look at all the curiosities, he was grateful when Cao Chunhua decided that they’ve had enough of walking, and pulled him after them to return to their inn room.
Ge Chen has been up since the first rays of daylight. He was exhausted.
The room was cosy from all the time Cao Chunhua already spent in it. Personal items were scattered on the table, a few pretty containers neighbouring with teacups, two sets of robes hanging over a folding screen, the bed made just so with their own hands. Ge Chen sat down on the edge of it, stroked the incredibly soft blanket that laid folded next to him.
“It’s a little messy,” Cao Chunhua said dismissively, knowing full well that Ge Chen’s own living space back home, if anything, was even more so. “You don’t mind, do you?”
Ge Chen made a vague noise in response and fell backward on the bed, rubbing his cheek on the cloud-soft sheets. The fabric smelled vaguely like Cao Chunhua’s perfume; a delicate flowery scent, slightly sweet, like berries. The sounds of the other moving around the room, faintly clinking teacups and pushing small items here and there, was as good as a lullaby.
“Did you bring an entire make-up store inventory with you?” Ge Chen muttered, tilting his head in the direction of the quiet noise.
“This is hardly an inventory,” Cao Chunhua responded, unperturbed. “I only have some of my favourite items here, — I did not bring any of the human skin masks this time, and —”
“Oh, human skin?”
“They feel like human skin, they are not actually made out of it.” He could almost hear Cao Chunhua rolling their eyes. Ge Chen grinned cheekily, eyes closed with his face against the bedsheets. The thought of a nap was becoming more and more tempting.
“Oh!” Cao Chunhua sounded excited, and in that very moment Ge Chen knew that he will not be getting any sleep anytime soon. “How about I make up your face? I have a few ideas I want to try.”
Ge Chen’s eyes snapped open. “Make-up? I doubt I can make it look good.”
“Well, I will,” Cao Chunhua insisted, moving away from the table to sit down next to him on the bed, the fabric of their robes pooling around them. A stray ribbon slipped ticklishly past Ge Chen’s nose. “I will make it quick, even.”
“Well, if it’s quick…” Ge Chen murmured, already making peace with his fate.
“You can try to paint my face, too,” Cao Chunhua offered generously. Ge Chen exhaled a sharp laugh.
“It will be a disaster, no.”
“Suit yourself,” Cao Chunhua said, unbothered, and pulled on his shoulders. “Go on, sit up.”
“It will be time to sleep soon, would that not defeat the purpose of putting make-up on now?” Ge Chen asked, letting them maneuver him into a sitting position. His judgment was too generous, — it was still daylight outside, — but he wanted to put up just a bit more symbolic resistance before giving in.
“Are you telling me that you’re willing to let me make you up for going outside?” Cao Chunhua’s eyes went round.
“No, I am not telling you that,” Ge Chen countered.
Cao Chunhua snickered. “Well, such a late hour will allow you to wash it off soon. Isn’t that nice?”
“I suppose.” Ge Chen shrugged.
Satisfied that they now had him in their grasp, Cao Chunhua got to work right away.
After a while of studying Ge Chen’s face, they sighed. “I think I will skip the powder for you, it might feel like too much.”
“Probably,” Ge Chen agreed. He was not fond of having stuff on his face, generally; while he was used to being covered in anything from dirt to machine oil, — something to be scrubbed off as soon as the opportunity presented itself, — it felt strange to have something on his face that he was supposed to keep there and preferably not touch.
He rarely offered his face to Cao Chunhua, no matter how many times they tried to entice him with sweet-smelling make-up in nicely decorated containers. In the rare cases he did, however, he would inevitably forget that his face was not, in fact, covered in dirt, and rubbed his eye, or his cheek. Just like that, Cao Chunhua’s efforts would be for naught.
At least they were having fun, Ge Chen thought with bemusement.
Currently they were completely unaware of their surroundings, focusing only on lightly dabbing minuscule amounts of rouge on his cheeks. He watched their teeth hover over their bottom lip, touching it lightly but not quite biting, — to avoid smudging off the lip paint.
The rouge had a faint flowery smell, the same one that he could smell on Cao Chunhua, so familiar that it felt domestic. So that is where it came from, rather than perfume.
If Cao Chunhua was anything, it was meticulous; Ge Chen honestly expected, and hoped, for them to be faster about it. He couldn’t help twitching an eye every once in a while, or an eyebrow, or tilting his head slightly when his neck began to cramp.
“Stop moving around,” Cao Chunhua scolded.
“I am not,” Ge Chen protested. “You are doing this too slowly.”
“I am being thorough,” they parried, then clicked their tongue and rubbed near his eye with the pad of their finger. “Close your eyes for now.”
Ge Chen felt them lightly dab at his eyelid, then brush his fringe away to work on the other one. Already tired to begin with, he began to grow completely drowsy, wondering briefly if he could sneak a quick nap while he was sitting here as Cao Chunhua’s test subject. Their movements as they touched his face were soothingly rhythmic.
The fringe brushed against his face again; Cao Chunhua took their hand away and stretched it, judging by the click of their wrist. They huffed quietly, possibly scrutinising their work. Then they moved closer, easily sliding onto Ge Chen’s lap and began to pat near his eyelids again. Their breath brushed his cheek.
“Can I open my eyes yet?” Ge Chen asked wearily.
“Shh,” Cao Chunhua ordered. They swayed suddenly and Ge Chen instinctively put a hand on their back to stabilise them.
“I am almost done,” they promised, giggling as they righted themself. Ge Chen sighed inwardly; that meant they were half-way done at best, if not less.
“Now, you can open your eyes,” Cao Chunhua allowed generously.
He did. It barely made a difference, but at least he could look at Cao Chunhua now. They were already holding up a small brush, its tip darkened with a soot-like substance, in one hand and a small tin in the other. Ge Chen did not manage to get a good enough look at it before Cao Chunhua was already carefully brushing it over his eyebrows, humming softly to themself.
At least they seemed to be moving a little faster now. The eyebrows were done in mere moments, they dabbed a few more times at the space under his eyes and with a satisfied hum wiped their stained fingers on a handkerchief.
To conclude, they slipped a small red paper between his lips, and he obediently held it there.
Evidently the first time did not yield the desired results, because Cao Chunhua kept making him hold it there for longer and longer, until eventually they took it away to look at it closely.
“What is it?” Ge Chen tilted his head. “Is it not working?”
“Mhm. This one might be defective.” Cao Chunhua thoughtfully examined the piece of lip paper, lightly touching it with the pad of their finger. None of the colour transferred to the skin.
“Seems like it,” Ge Chen said uncertainly.
They pensively looked off to the side, their fingers playing with a lock of their hair.
“You can use another paper,” Ge Chen said, confused by how much Cao Chunhua was dwelling on this. “Or skip this altogether.”
“Skip?” they pouted. “But it’s part of my vision.”
“No one will even see it except for the two of us,” Ge Chen pointed out.
“So what? I should still put work into it,” Cao Chunhua huffed, offended at the mere insinuation that they not go all out. “I don’t think I have any extra paper left, either. Now hold still.” Ge Chen, who was not moving much in the first place, complied.
Cao Chunhua leaned in and carefully pressed their lips to his.
Caught completely off guard, Ge Chen froze, blinking helplessly as several half-formed thoughts scrambled around in his mind. Cao Chunhua was palpably warm, sitting so close, the tip of their nose briefly brushing his cheek, their hand resting on his upper arm. Their fingers curled slightly into his sleeve and his brain filled with white noise.
He remembered belatedly that Cao Chunhua’s own lips were painted a bright, eye-catching red.
It lasted only for a few moments, and soon they were pulling back, eyelashes fluttering. Then they grinned. “Ah, it worked a little.”
The numbness slowly began to ebb out of Ge Chen’s brain.
He instinctively raised a hand to his mouth, then put it back down to avoid touching his face. As much as this was just for fun, he did not want to ruin any of Cao Chunhua’s efforts. Yet. “Is it visible?” Perhaps he was also reluctant to wipe away the evidence of the kiss, but that was his own business.
Nodding, they reached out with a finger and dabbed around his mouth, fixing the colour edges. “It looks visible in a natural way,” Cao Chunhua explained with an air of authority. “Not enough colour to look artificial, but it is visibly brighter than your natural lip shade.”
Ge Chen looked at them helplessly. “Right.”
“It’s nice,” Cao Chunhua said softly, fingers slipping down to his chin to turn his face this way and that. “This colour looks good on you.”
They are probably talking about the one they used for his eyelids, the specifics of which Ge Chen completely forgot already. He had a feeling it was some warm shade. Maybe orange? “You are the one who decided to pick it,” he said finally. He could only imagine what his face looked like right now.
They giggled. “Are you trying to compliment me?”
“Sure,” Ge Chen said easily. “You are good at picking colours, but you already know that.”
Cao Chunhua smiled. “That’s sweet of you to say.”
The two of them looked at each other for a while. Cao Chunhua was admiring their own handiwork more than anything else, but the attention was still kind of nice; they dabbed at his face a few more times to lay down final touches. Ge Chen wondered if the natural blush he could feel on his face would be concealed by the rouge, or if it would make it look darker instead.
“It’s finished,” Cao Chunhua finally declared and fluttered over to the mirror, pulling him along. Ge Chen sighed internally, trying to quickly come up with possible words of praise that could be used for make-up, which he had absolutely no knowledge about.
The pigment on his eyelids turned out to be a medium-light shade, applied delicately enough to be barely-visible unless he turned his head a certain way. There was a modest amount of rouge applied to his cheeks, and his lips, true to Cao Chunhua’s words, were just bright enough to look healthy.
“This…” Ge Chen scrutinised himself in the mirror, having no expectations for the result but still pleasantly surprised. “Huh.”
“I used just enough for it to be visible, but not enough for it to bother you,” Cao Chunhua explained, peeking over his shoulder into the mirror. “It doesn’t feel heavy on your skin, right?”
“No,” Ge Chen shook his head, still studying himself. There was a bit of darker colour at the corners of his eyes, he now saw. His eyebrows looked fuller than usual too, a bit darker.
He glanced down at the table and spotted the pigment that must have been used for his eyelids. It was yellow-orange, the same shade as the skin of a peach; it looked very similar to the pot of rouge next to it, with the exception of the colour.
Cao Chunhua noticed him studying it. “Do you like it? I messed around a little to make it.”
“You made it?”
“Just the colour,” Cao Chunhua explained, suddenly a little sheepish. “I mixed the dyes together, at the very least, then added the same base that works for the rouge.”
Ge Chen chuckled. “And yet you say you have nothing to do with inventions.”
They smacked his arm lightly. “It’s barely an invention.” They hooked their chin over his shoulder, standing on tip-toes. “Well, do you like it?”
“It’s nice,” Ge Chen said vaguely. He was used to make-up looking more prominent, obvious that it was there, but here it was so unobtrusive, inconspicuous almost, that it felt very novel. For a moment, he wished that he had more of an interest in things like this; he would have been better able to describe what impressed him about it. “Looks… different.”
Cao Chunhua smiled in response, — the kind of faux-shy smile they tended to use when they were being complimented. Ge Chen was grateful that they did not seem inclined to tease him about his wording.
Both of them stared at the mirror for a while more before Cao Chunhua grew tired of keeping their balance on tip-toes and turned to head back to their previous spot. They took up his former place on the bed, splaying out comfortably with their eyes fluttering shut. “Ah, all this work is exhausting.”
“Of course,” Ge Chen agreed, barely holding back a laugh. “Are you going to leave all your precious make-up out?”
“Mm, could you put it away for me?” Their tone was playful, light.
Ge Chen had no reason to object.
The box was familiar enough to him from all the other times Cao Chunhua has asked him to fetch one thing or another. He set the dirty brushes to the side to be washed later, found all the needed lids, sorted the containers by appearance and put them together. He could feel his friend’s gaze on him as he sorted out the items, and hoped the tips of his ears were not too red.
As a distraction, he took the opportunity to check on the well-being of the make-up box itself. While it was clearly sturdy, it was already several years old, the wood showing obvious signs of use. Ge Chen filed that detail away in his mind; perhaps he will hand-make a new one and present it to Cao Chunhua as a gift in the future. If he felt like it.
He was almost done putting everything in its proper place when he paused, eyebrow raised.
“Xiao-Cao?” Ge Chen pointed to a few pieces of red paper neatly stacked in the corner of the box. “Is that extra lip paper?”
Cao Chunhua sat up just enough to see it and put a hand to their mouth, their laugh a bit nervous. “Oh, is it? I must have forgotten that I have more. How awkward.”
Ge Chen blinked, processing, then shook his head in exasperation and neatly closed the box, smiling quietly to himself. It was already getting late — maybe he will ask Cao Chunhua if he can spend the night here.
He had a feeling that they would have no problem with it.