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On a sunny afternoon of running errands, Yor Forger was confronted with the reality of the life she now leads.
“Oh, Mrs. Forger, did you want to pick up your husband’s order as well while you’re here?” The seamstress asked so very innocently, as such a question would be asked. After all, to the world they’re newlyweds, the lovey-dovey type who sleep in the same bed. Why wouldn’t she be happy to pick up her husband’s errands for him? That was the role of a wife in society, or at least it was how she understood it; it was all the girls at the office talked about these days, if the husband forgot an errand and made them do it or such.
“I-I don’t see why not, haha!” Yor replied too quickly, leaping into this unknown territory with both feet.
“Just a moment, then!” The seamstress steps behind the counter, leaving Yor’s own order in a bag next to her (a set of new underthings and a matching dress to replace the ones she so foolishly stained with viscera just the other night during her last round of Cleaning). From the back room, Yor can hear her rummaging around in something that sounds like a pile of rustling paper.
“Do you happen to remember what Mr. Forger had ordered, Yor? It’s been ready for a few days and I fear it may be buried under my other work!” As if to illustrate the point, packages and parcels sail through the air beyond the doorway, landing elsewhere in the small back room. “It was his favorite kind of underwear, if that helps you identify it.”
Yor felt a chill run up her spine, the sort of terrifying thrill she always felt in life-or-death situations in her work. A simultaneous fear and thrill, a fear of unmasking, that the truth of her life would be revealed. Yor, in reality, was simply a false wife unworthy of the handsome husband and darling child she’s been given. She had understood it when this began, but every time something such as this comes up, she can’t help but feel a little more pointless in the grand scheme of things.
How could she possibly answer this correctly? Does the secret police keep track of people’s underwear preferences for confirming things like this? Does she even know all the proper kinds of male underwear? Does Loid even wear men’s underwear? What if he is more free-spirited than she thought and wears something esoteric, or even something more like her own? Would he look good in those, too?
“Yor? Mrs. Forger…” The seamstress waves a hand in front of her face. “Are you okay?”
“Ah! I’m so sorry! Please forgive me, I was, I was-” She can feel herself blushing brighter than the tomatoes she had been instructed to purchase for dinner. “I was thinking about Loid in his underwear!”
The seamstress pauses for only a heartbeat before laughing uproariously, wiping a tear from her eye.
“Oh, to be so young! I’m sorry, Yor, I didn’t mean to cause you any trouble. Ah, but what fun it must be to be freshly married and still find such joy in the little things like that.” She sighs, resting her head in her hand. “I miss those days. Make sure to cherish them, Yor, before they’re gone. You’re only young for so long, after all.”
“Oh, we’re…very, in love…” She trails off, blushing further and turning away so she can’t meet the seamstress’ eyes, for fear of being discovered. Why is this the hardest part of keeping up the charade? She quietly pays, but before she can take the bag of clothes from the seamstress, she pulls it just out of Yor’s reach.
“I don’t remember, is Loid a boxer shorts or briefs kind of man? My husband swears by boxers to this day…”
Yor flinches, already too red to blush any further. Even when she was raising her brother, she went out of her way to give him as much space as possible with regards to his own clothes, and hadn’t the faintest idea which corresponded to what style of underwear. Are boxers tough, like the prize fighters she always hears about? Maybe briefs are very abbreviated…how much could they truly cover? Less than a woman’s…?
“Boxers!” She blurts without further consideration. “He loves boxers!”
“Is that so…?” Before the seamstress can inquire further or elaborate, Yor strikes quickly, snatching the bag from her hand and making a hasty goodbye. This is altogether too much for her to be dealing with in public!
At home, things did not improve.
Arriving home, Yor placed the bag of packages on the counter and went about placing the groceries Loid had requested in their proper places. Even so, visions of her ersatz husband danced in her mind. What strange manners of underwear do men wear? She’s seen some of them in various states of undress in her work as a cleaner, but what do those styles correspond to? Is there any correlation to the underwear she’s used to, bras for lifting and comfort, panties and bloomers and even the occasional thong (though she despises them and avoids them at all cost)...
Before long, Yor finds herself alone in the apartment with only Loid’s package on her mind, resting tantalizingly on the coffee table before her. A single layer of brown paper and twine separates her from a discovery of world-shattering potential.
By now, she’s decided that Loid would look best in something form-fitting and pleasantly soft, cotton or one of the synthetic fibers that has become more common in the country in the last few years. He always seems so worried, she feels that it would give him comfort to have such a comfortable kind of underwear. She would not wish any of the more arcane bustiers or corsetries she’s worked with in the past upon him, both because they would squeeze the living daylights out of him, but also because she privately believes these articles of clothing should all be cut up with knives. Slowly. Preferably, by her, so that she could enjoy it properly.
Slowly, hesitantly, she takes the tag tied to Loid’s bulging item in one hand, glancing fretfully at the door as if Loid may return at any moment.
Forger, L. X.
#Order# XXXXX-XX-07
#3 Special Orders
“Briefs”, Grey Pinstripe, Size M
Customized
Briefs.
She turns the tag over, turning the word over in her mind like a precious gem, examining every facet. Brief means short, so they must be short. How short? Shorts for men go all the way to the knee in some styles, but Yor knows from experience that women’s shorts scarcely touch the thigh in many cultures…How much of Loid would she be able to see if he wore them?
“Mama’s being weird.”
Yor leaps to her feet and away from Anya, the child having somehow snuck up on her while she contemplated Loid’s package further. Have her senses truly become so dulled by this unstoppable train of thought barreling down on her?
“Anya, you s-startled me!” Yor sits back down, trying to calm herself, while Anya wanders over to the other side of the coffee table. “Ah, don’t touch that!”
“Mama’s still being weird.” Anya says, though she does at least not touch Loid’s package. “What is it?”
“Some of Loid’s clothes.”
“Ah.” Anya says, instantly less interested in the parcel, yawning loudly.
“Are you tired, dear? It won’t be dinner for another hour or two, you could nap before Loid comes home.” Yor, an ancient practitioner of the catnap, is always ready to offer the same to her adopted daughter. It’s tough being so young.
“Yeah.” Anya yawns again. “Class was tough.”
“I’m proud of you for making it through the day.” She stands, patting Anya on the head and guiding her to her room. Once Anya’s settled down for her nap, Yor returns out to the living room and picks up Loid’s package, balancing its delicate weight in her hand. It wouldn’t hurt to see it…would it? No…she couldn’t.
In her room, Anya murmurs ‘Mama’s being weird again’ to herself as she drifts off to nap.
Yor hooks a finger under the paper.
It’s soft. Not silk, but the gentle scratch of…
“Flannel…” She murmurs to herself, the pad of her index finger stroking over the fabric under the paper. A comforting softness unlike any other, perfect for the cold climate of Ostania. She can already feel the fabric warming under her touch, which is disgustingly perverse to her, but she can’t bring herself to remove her hand. The tag said a grey pinstripe…could Loid coordinate his suits to his underwear? He wears grey so often, but during Anya’s application to the academy, he had worn a black tuxedo…Was there a matching pair of svelte black briefs in his unmentionables drawer, perhaps?
At that, she withdraws her finger from within the package. “Would it…” She pauses, swallowing hard and trying not to panic. Would it be the wifely thing to do to put his underwear purchase away for him? She had already touched them, so it wasn’t beyond the pale for her to handle them...would it?
Loid already does so much for her…He cooks, he pays for their living accommodations, he teaches Anya the math and history, not to mention the language arts and social studies which she was totally hopeless at…Is this really all she could do for him, run errands and clean the apartment, pay for things his psychiatry practice couldn’t cover, which is almost nothing at all?
She thinks back to the tailor’s shop, her unthinking blurting of Boxers, only to discover now that the underwear that was his favorite is briefs…she barely knows Loid, and yet she pretends to be his wife. They have made it work so well so far, but how much longer could it last at this level? She can’t simply sit by and allow their arrangement to fall apart, for both Anya’s sake and her own. If she must be not just an adoptive mother to Anya but a wife to Loid, she can do so much better than she is, that much is clear to her.
She must be able to declare to anyone the underpants Loid wears every day and prove that she was right! A wife knows her husband beyond any shadow of doubt!
Turning over in her bed, Anya mumbles ‘Mama’s flirting’ in her sleep.
Loid returned home that evening, bearing a large bag of groceries in each arm.
“Here, let me help.” Yor swoops in once he made his entrance known (she never could notice him coming up the stairs to their floor, somehow…), taking one of the hefty bags out of his arms before he could protest and moving into the kitchen with it.
“Ah, thank you, Yor.” Loid kicks the door shut behind himself, locking the door before following her in and unloading the spoils of his shopping.
“I stopped by the tailor today.” Yor said, focusing entirely on the vegetables in her hands and setting them down gently. Calm, cool and collected, Yor. Be calm, cool and collected. Oh, but it’s so much easier when she’s cleaning than this! “The seamstress mentioned that they had an order for you that had been waiting to be picked up for a few days, so I picked it up for you. I hope you don’t mind.”
Even with her vision focused on putting away the groceries with him, she could tell he tensed slightly at the thought of it.
“That’s fine.” He said nonchalantly, despite his body language’s screaming tension. “I appreciate the help.”
“Your package is safe in your room. Anya wanted to open it until I told her it was yours.” She pauses.
It would have been visible from space that his shoulders had hunched up into a knot of tension in his back.
“I’m glad you didn’t let her. Thank you for taking care of that for me.”
“Do you like b-b-boxers or briefs more, Loid?” Yor blurts it out without thinking. That glass of wine was supposed to steady her nerves, but she’s a total mess now!
“Mama’s flirting.” Anya mutters, too engrossed in Bondman’s recorded episode of the day to join in properly.
“I don’t know if I prefer one or the other, really.” He says, smiling. “Why do you ask?”
“The tailor asked, and I realized I didn’t know for sure.” Yor puts down a tomato, wincing at both the thought of how red she must look, as well as the indentations from her fingers that she had left. “Which of them do you like more?”
For a moment, Loid turns away from her as he places things in another cabinet away from her, and doesn’t reply. She finds herself about to blurt ‘I hate thongs with all my being!’ when he speaks.
“I like briefs for the range of movement, but boxers are incredibly freeing in their own way when summer comes. I don’t know if I could pick one over the other.”
“Ah, are boxers the draped underwear that look a little bit like a flag flapping in the wind?” Yor says, the wine working its magic upon her all while she curses herself inwardly for thinking it could possibly help.
“That’s…right.” Loid turns to her, an eyebrow raised. “I suppose it goes without saying that you haven’t seen men’s underwear all that often, then?”
“Ah…You’re right.” Yor slumps her shoulders. “I never paid attention to what my brother wore, and hardly ever saw them in any case. It’s…not very wifely, is it?”
“You’ve picked a very strange way to worry about that, Yor.” Loid leans against the countertop, shucking his jacket and laying it on the counter. This is his typical pre-dinner ritual, rolling his sleeves up carefully so he can get to work in the kitchen. A very un-husbandly thing done so very husbandly…She admires that about him a great deal. He makes everything look so simple.
“Well, it’s…an important thing to worry about, isn’t it? After all, if we don’t appear to be a normal family, Anya’s school…” She trails off, biting her thumbnail in worry. An afternoon of worrying about it and a glass of wine on an empty stomach to calm her nerves before Loid’s arrival have had something closer to the opposite effect than intended.
“That may be true, but it would be more unnatural to try to do things that don’t come to us naturally than to appear as an ideal family with so many idiosyncrasies that we stick out like a sore thumb.” He turns away, gathering items from the refrigerator. Yor picks up his jacket, walking to the door to hang it properly. She can manage that much, at least.
“I suppose…” She sighs, brushing at the coat so that it hangs perfectly from the door hook. “Even so, I feel terrible that I can offer so little to this family as a mother and a wife. I want to know you completely, Loid. If there’s anything I can do for you, I want to. Not just because of your hard work for this family.” She can feel her blush deepening even as she says it, but Yor needs to get that thought out of her head, before it drives her crazy. It’s all that has been echoing in her head ever since she got home.
“Yor…” Loid says, seemingly at a loss for words, still deep in the fridge hunting for something. “Did you drink the last of that bottle of wine I was saving?” He emerges from the fridge, holding the bottle containing the dregs of her bottle of red wine. She makes a small noise of upset, realizing only now that he had told her to save it for him for a dish he had been preparing.
“I’m so sorry! I was so worried about not being a good wife for you, I was…” She trails off, frowning at Loid. He’s smiling softly at her, holding the wine bottle in his hands like one would hold a child.
“It’s very sweet of you to worry about such things, Yor.” He lifts the wine bottle to his lips, drinking the last dregs of red wine with gusto. A single rivulet of red runs out of the corner of his mouth, trailing down the hollow of his neck until it catches on the collar of his shirt, staining the white material a pale crimson. “But we have plenty more around here, so don’t worry about it.”
She hardly notices when he gently bumps her on the top of the head with the bottle.
“You got some on your shirt…” She mutters, putting her hands on his chest. “Will you let me fix that?”
The silence between them lingers, her eyes on his, until she slips her fingers into his free hand, squeezing his palm tightly.
Standing in his own room, Loid Forger has never felt so thoroughly trapped in his life.
It hadn’t been a choice he made consciously, to walk towards his room with his hand in Yor’s. It was closer to an autonomic response, a basal need in his brain for them to move to a safer space for such a fraught moment. Despite such an instinct, he felt as if a gunman had a pistol pressed to his temple, that he could feel the cold metal on his skin because every other part of him was burning.
Why the hell had he played along?
Yor stood in his room, her back holding the door shut. She seemed equally overwhelmed, red to match her sweater and her lips set in a thin line, her gaze wandering around the room at everything but him. And so he sat down on the bed, his hands hanging between his legs, staring at the carpet and running through the last minute over and over again, trying to determine what had gone so badly awry to end up here.
Yor walked towards his dresser, placing herself by accident or by intent between him and the door.
What had happened to Yor today? What could turn the gorgeous, spacy woman he had chosen as his cover wife towards such a strange train of thought? She was on the warpath, though the war appeared to be rather more mundane than her typical obsessions. Being a wife...He understands why that would be on her mind. If he were anyone else in the world, he would be head over heels right now. Objectively, if he were anyone else, he would be one of the happiest men in not just Ostania but maybe the world over, that this woman wants to become more to him than his wife on paper.
But another part of him could never allow that sort of attachment, that sentiment. Twilight, the man of one thousand faces, the man who can walk away from any identity in 30 seconds flat without a goodbye, could never accept that.
“Ah…such fine clothes.” Yor murmurs to herself, the wardrobe open before her. “You always dress so well, Loid.” She plucks another white shirt from the hanging bar, dangling it from its hook by one finger and turning back to him.
“Yor.” Loid says warily, making no sudden movements. “What’s going on with you?”
“Please, just let me do this. Isn’t it enough for a wife to want to tend to her husband?” She says, an oddly dreamlike tone in her voice. There was very little wine left in the bottle even before she drank most of it, so she couldn’t have had more than one glass at the most. She may be willful right now, but she’s not so unreasonable as she can be with two or three glasses in her. He can still talk her down.
What about this has to be talked down, though? Can’t he let it ride? She’s only a civilian, and it suits his purposes if his cover is more ironclad than it was before, especially once they begin moving in the higher echelons of the academy’s social events.
But is that right, either? In the past, the people he has used as social cover in that manner, men and women both, have been involved in some way or another. Is it right to drag her into this web of state politics simply because she agreed to it and fell in love?
Is there even any point to worrying about it, now? She’s involved, no helping it now.
The shirt is dropped on the bed next to him, and two supremely confident hands are loosening his tie, her fingers resting gently against his neck before descending to his buttons.
Things are getting entirely beyond him, now.
“Yor…” He pauses, uncertainty gnawing a hole in his stomach. “I don’t want you to push yourself into something because you feel you need to, for my sake.” Her hands halt just above his navel, halfway through their task.
“It’s not that.” Her face is closer to his than he realized, the difference in height equalized by his low bed and her leaning forward to reach the lower buttons. Glancing up and locking eyes with him for only a moment, she looks away and sighs, her hands falling away from his shirt. “I just…I want to feel useful for more than just what little I can do. Or, no, it’s that I want you to rely on me, even if it is for the little things. Is that confusing?”
“Not particularly.” He shakes his head. Her eyes return to him, and the pained frown she had fallen into deepens.
“It’s just that you do so much for Anya and myself, and I wish I could do those things for you so that you could rest and not worry so much about everything. But I’m not smart, and I’m not well read or particularly insightful. I can’t cook more than rice or soup, either.” She smiles with more than a little chagrin. “I’m not good for much other than cleaning. But I can do that much, and anything other than that, I can at least try. And I want to try my best, for you. For Anya. So please, will you rely on me more, Loid?”
It’s all he can do not to sigh outright and lament his ulcer, which by now is most certainly growing larger by the day.
“How could I say no to such an earnest request from the woman I married?” Loid puts on his best smile, the one that partner after partner fall for without fail.
“You could stand to smile more genuinely, you know.” Yor returns to unbuttoning, tugging his shirttails out of his pants with a force that makes his eyebrows shoot up.
That one always works…She’s acting so in love with him, and yet it didn’t even faze her? He’s too busy contemplating that to deal with the fact that she dutifully stripped him of his shirt and was slipping its replacement onto him, one arm after the other.
“You’re surprisingly cavalier about this shirt business, you know.” Loid mumbles.
“It was my fault your shirt got that stain, after all. I’ll take responsibility for anything that’s my fault.” She loops his tie into the collar of the new shirt before beginning to button it. “I had a lot of practice doing this for Yuri when he was young, so I consider this to be something I can do easily.”
“You know, most men would take being compared to their brother-in-law as a dreadful sign.” Loid points out as she works on his tie, carefully looping it together into the same windsor knot he favors.
“O-oh, is that so?” She says nonchalantly, explaining everything regarding why Yor was single before meeting Loid with a single statement. She puts the finishing touches on his tie, one hand resting against his chest as she cinches it back into place. “Well, nevertheless…”
Her face is only inches from his, again. Her hand hasn’t left his chest, either, surprisingly warm through the slightly-too-cold shirt. He can feel his own face heating, the reality of the situation finally getting to him. She basically drunkenly confessed her love for him, here, and all he’s done about it is quietly acquiesce. Where’s Twilight, and what happened to that killer instinct that saw him through the hell of espionage behind enemy lines? If this operation goes bad, could he walk away without looking back now? So much for being able to walk away in thirty seconds flat.
Of course, he realizes now, it was never one he could just walk away from, not from the moment that he’d been forced by the mission specs to involve a child and a civilian woman.
Lost in his own reverie, he realized too late that Yor was leaning in for a kiss, eyes screwed shut so intensely that she looked for all the world as if she had just eaten an entire lemon. He almost missed those brilliantly red eyes now that they weren’t staring so intensely down at him
He leans in, his hand drifting to her hip and holding her gently.
“Mama, Papa, I’m hungry.” Anya called through the door, banging three times with surprising force for her size. “Dinner…” She trails off, mumbling something Loid can’t catch. Something about them flirting? That may be the first time she’s been right about that one.
“Ah, I forgot!” Yor leaps to her feet away from him, dashing for the door and lifting Anya by the armpits. “Let’s go pick up the dinner Mama ordered, Anya!” Before Loid has a chance to say anything, he can hear Yor running out the door and through the building at top speed. If the living room window was open, he was certain he’d be able to hear her footfalls on the cobblestone outside.
Without anything left to keep himself upright for, Loid collapses back onto his bed with a mighty groan. Reaching up behind his head, he snatches his pillow with both hands and pulls it tight over his face.
“What the hell…What the hell just happened?!”
On the top of the dresser next to the bed, his new underwear rests neatly folded on the package it had been contained in.