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 Posted: Sat Dec 24, 2022 4:13 pm
Afternoon of Christmas Eve, and most of the apartments in Reiki and Haruhi’s building sat there quietly. Some had seen their inhabitants fly off elsewhere to visit family. Others housed people who had nobody to visit, or at least nobody they really wanted to go see for the holidays. Several of the little dwellings housed Jewish families, and would likely liven up after sunset, but as yet, remained quiet. Tranquil. Peaceful and serene.
……Then, there was Reiki and Haruhi’s place, currently full to bursting with the sound of Reiki’s hot pink, patent leather Barbie doll heels clattering across the floor. Somewhat softer, Cersei Rokugin’s padded paws and little nails scraped along the hardwood as she followed behind Her Person. Of course, after so many years at Reiki’s side, she knew all too well that Her Person regularly darted back and forth all over whatever apartment they called “home” at the moment, moving from his bedroom to the craft room, digging through his assorted drag outfits, and packing various things up not so he could take her out for playtime at a dog-park, but so he could disappear for a while, then come back later and make her eggs, or curl up in bed, or similar.
What didn’t quite track—or so Reiki imagined her canine perspective to be, and why she’d taken to following him when she normally didn’t—was what Cersei’s Person had to be thinking at this specific moment. After all, he’s started doing this dance of packing while both of his younger sisters sat on the sofa. Judging from the way Hinami crossed her arms and bemusedly pouted at him, she probably more than agreed with Cersei’s “why is Dad doing this, make it make sense” hot take of the moment. Nariko, bless her, seemed more fixated on her phone than anything, but Hinami screwed up her mouth like she had a bone to pick with somebody. Still, if Reiki kept his body moving and his mind focused on assembling everything he needed, maybe he could escape any nonsense about people questioning his choices.
Hem-hem!!—he winced as he skulked back into his room. Hinami pointedly clearing her throat like that rarely ever meant anything good. No good luck for Reiki for one thousand years.
“Correct me if I’m wrong, niichan,” she said with the air of a woman who certainly thought she had the right answer already, “but didn’t you also do a brunch show this morning?”
“You’re damn right I did. Do you have any idea how much a booking for holiday brunch shows pays?”
With a sigh, Reiki pawed around in his closet. He’d already packed up the outfits he knew he’d need: a cute little non-specific winter holiday outfit that he could sing in easily (which would, at the end of that number, reveal itself to be something significantly sluttier than it appeared to be at first blush); his version of Judy Garland’s red Christmas finery from Meet Me In St. Louis (mostly perfect in its detail-duping, save some extra pizazz inspired by various holiday Barbie dolls Reiki had loved as a kid, and then you got to the floor-length skirt, which concealed another, sluttier skirt beneath it, for the second part of the number); and his Disney-Elsa costume from Pride season, with the built-in reveals from her coronation banquet gown to “Let It Go” blue, to “Show Yourself” (though his dress, technically, had the good grace to be silver rather than white, the ugliest and most impractical color ever in the history of human existence, completely inexcusable outside of white parties or occasions that called for serving bridal realness).
Ideally, he’d only need those three outfits and their matching wigs. Doing three numbers in a show—even granted that Sibyl and Cherry would do most of the hosting—was already a tall ask for any drag or burlesque performer, no matter how seasoned. So, Reiki could have been fine, sticking to the plan: three outfits for three numbers, nice, clean, simple.
But on the other hand: since when in show business had anything ever gone exactly according to plan? Since never, exactly. Live performance was always a case-study in Murphy’s Law.… So, he’d need to have some backup outfits he could perform in. He kept all his mixes on the same MP3 player that he knew worked with the setup at Scandals, clearly labeled so he could tell Matt and Katie which ones to play and when to do so. Music, ready, all a matter of which outfits a b***h wanted to twirl in tonight.… Could never go wrong with his dupe of the St. Magdalena’s uniform; it went well with so many different types of numbers. Plenty of bodysuits, catsuits, lingerie, and cute little dresses, because you had to have old reliables such as those. Any of them would have served him well.
Yet, as Hinami piped up to nag him again—“You know that it’s Christmas Eve, right, niichan? Not even ******** retail workers have to be there this late tonight! Not at most places, anyway”—Reiki’s eyes felt drawn to an outfit he hadn’t worked since the twentieth of May.
He remembered the night exactly. He’d been wearing said outfit when Levi and Soya had taken him to the Black Mirror.
Seemed a shame to only wear this little number once.… Working with the fabric alone had been a nightmare, never mind trying to make the sluttaciously short spin on a yukata look expensive instead of cheap, like the highest-class bad b***h oiran in vintage Edo’s red lotus district, the kind who would have charmed a King, a Congressman, and an occasional aristocrat if any such men had existed in her world (and who, in lieu of such men, probably commanded very high prices for her company and services).
Just, y’know. If the classiest bad b***h oiran in vintage Edo’s red lotus district happened to find herself in an era where thigh-highs with visible garters and a miniskirt on her yukata would ever have been deemed appropriate dress for such an elegant, cultured woman.
Thankfully, while Reiki assessed his garment, Nariko answered Hinami so he didn’t have to: “Most places doesn’t mean all places, ‘Nami-chan. Haruhi’s stuck working late tonight, too—”
“Operative word there being stuck,” Hinami pointed out. “Ne has the federal government telling nem when to show up and when they can get off the clock. Plus, ne has a ******** jackass for a boss. But our idiot brother went and willingly signed up for this.”
“Like he hasn’t done crazier things before? I’m sorry, what’s the actual complaint you’re making here?”
“That it’s Christmas ******** Eve, and Kiki’s getting all gussied up to go do a <******** show. At the bar.” Although Reiki couldn’t see her doing it, Hinami made the roll of her eyes perfectly obvious in her utterly outraged and aggrieved sigh.
Mentally, he finished that statement for her: The bar, where Hinami is not allowed to be tonight, because if she shows up for another family get-together hungover, Dad is going to be upset.
Reiki couldn’t blame Dad for that, either. Dealing with a hungover Hinami Rokugin made dealing with a bag full of wet cats look highly preferable by comparison. Not that this was Dad’s actual problem with the whole idea of Hinami coming to things hungover, but Reiki’s point remained valid.
“I just don’t get why it’s even gotta be a question of working or family,” Hinami went on grousing, like Reiki and Nariko didn’t know exactly what she really meant. “Or why you’d actively sign up to go do a show on Christmas ******** Eve. Are there even gonna be enough people at Scandals to justify it being open?”
“Verna and Hector sure think so. The partridge in the pear tree gave them a magical vision and said they should open the bar like normal tonight,” Reiki said, deciding that he would take this garment with him. He’d let himself use his drink tickets last time, still been feeling the Diet Coke-and-Cuervos when Levi and Soya had shown up to save him from Niji Kidna. After all the work he’d put into arranging this number, it deserved a performance where he did it sober.
In the face of Hinami throwing him a distinctly sour look, Reiki shrugged. “They got the prophecy verified by a secondhand transistor radio, if it makes a difference.”
As he packed up the precious oiran dress, his slutty St. Magdalena’s dupe, and an adequate little black dress that would certainly be attached to his body while made of fabric and looking passably cute, Reiki assured himself that taking everything he needed for his “it’s the music, not the story” number was the right call. If he wound up doing the number again, awesome. If he didn’t, at least he’d come to the bar prepared. Just needed to get his Yamamura Sadako wig and the one like “Super Bass”-era Nicki Minaj, half-and-half violently cotton candy pink and platinum blonde, but styled like the oiran of old. Not as classy in one regard, namely his significantly cheaper hair decos—but as long as they sparkled sufficiently and looked cute enough, Reiki could make do. Most of his audience couldn’t tell the difference anyway.
Maybe he should’ve paused to swap out his hot pink Barbie heels for something better suited to getting out to Scandals. Judging by how Nariko quirked an eyebrow as he wiggled into his winter coat, then pointedly stared down at his feet, Reiki’s shoes left much to be desired in this way. But—well, he couldn’t exactly tell his sisters that he didn’t plan on walking all the way there.
What he could do, though, was crouch down to give Cersei her goodbye skritches and kissies, then look up at her beloved aunts.
“Not everybody gets lucky in the family department like we all did, ‘Nami,” he told her, voice serious and earnest. “All the queers who don’t have families to go spend the holiday with, whether they’re blood or found? They’ll want somewhere to go. A place to be. Don’t they deserve that?”
“Don’t the staff deserve Christmas Eve off, though?”
“If it were any bar but Scandals, I’d agree with you, but so many of the staff have nowhere else to go, too.” Sighing heavily, Reiki tried not to turn up the volume too high on his earnest, sparkly eyes……but he also didn’t entirely try to avoid unleashing them on her. “Only the ground floor’s gonna be open. The only staff working at the bar tonight volunteered for it, with the promise that Hector and Verna wouldn’t open if no one wanted to come in. The only people booked in the show, likewise? Volunteered to be there—”
“But why did you have to volunteer to be there? You do have somewhere to go tonight. We’re your family.” Hinami pouted hard enough for him to get her meaning, even if she didn’t outright say “Why are you doing a show on a night when I can’t be there, watching?”
“You are,” Reiki agreed. “But so is everybody down at Scandals.”
With that piece said, he didn’t waste time in heading out. Less time for Hinami to argue with him when neither of them wanted to compromise.
Once down, out, and in a relatively quiet alley, he powered up—an extra benefit of being a senshi, and of his new fuku’s pretty sleeves: better protection from the cold than he got from any jacket—stashed his drag in his subspace, and made for one of the convenient mirrors that he knew lurked nearby. The sooner he got to Scandals, the more helpful he could be with whatever nonsense decides that it felt like going wrong tonight.
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Posted: Sat Dec 24, 2022 8:19 pm
Sure enough: Reiki wasn’t inside the bar five minutes before he found his first signs of Things Going Wrong.
Specifically, after retrieving his drag from his subspace, powering down in the alley next to Gertrude’s, strutting across the street, and giving the current “I’m a performer, please let me in even though the bar’s not open yet” password to Nigel at the door, Reiki heard his phone spit up the telltale ding! of a text message. Annoying enough that he needed to shuffle all his gear into one hand so he could check the stupid thing. Worse enough that the text turned out to be from Sibyl.
[babydoll, when you get here, come find me ASAP]
Reiki was trying to fumble out a reply one-handed when Sibyl sent an addendum: [need help with show order, filling enough time, and things]
—Oh, it was *THAT kind of ASAP, then. In that case, Reiki simply pocketed his phone again and made a beeline for the little labyrinth of halls punctuated by unexpectedly cavernous rooms that the fine performers of Scandals Bar called “backstage.” Technically, it counted as such, since it was behind the area on the ground floor that got used as a stage/general performance space? But semantics didn’t matter as much as finding Sibyl and figuring out what she needed.
She turned up in dressing room number two, per her usual. Seated before one of the well-lit mirrors, at the work-station that everyone knew (or very swiftly learned, in newbies’ cases) to respect and honor as Miss Sibyl’s Spot. Under the newly installed LED lights, her warm-toned, earth-dark skin shone even as she meticulously patted down her powder foundation.
A moment to set down his drag bag and wig-case, then Reiki swooped into the station at her right-hand side. Perched on the stool and watched her with the same awe he’d felt at five years old, marveling over how Aunt Satomi’s friend Jude could magically become a different person with makeup. “What’s the trouble, Mama?”
“Baby,” Sibyl drawled as though she hadn’t sent him a text invoking the acronym ASAP, “your timing could not be more perfect. Honestly, how do you do it?”
Reiki shrugged. “My phone went off right as I walked in the door. Simple coincidence.”
“No, no, it feels like there’s something more than that with you, lately. For the past few months, I mean.” Oblivious to the chill she sent straight to the pit of his chest, Sibyl sighed. Dipped her applicator back into her tray of foundation. “Not that you were ever a slacker before or any such nonsense as that—oh, perish the thought! As if anyone who could inspire me to found a Haus would ever.”
“You know who to blame for my self-neglectful work-ethic, Mama.” Pushing his glasses up, Reiki clarified, “My mom Mom, Obaasan, and mostly me.”
“Yes, but business with you and grad school notwithstanding,” Sibyl said, “you’ve been so much better lately about turning up right exactly when somebody needs you. Half the time, you say ‘Oh, I’m on my way’ and turn up only a few minutes later, even when you should’ve been up around campus, or taking dinner to your cousin at the post office, or whatever you like.”
Inhaling deeply, Reiki glanced down at his wig case. Up at the ceiling. Over his shoulder at some of the photos lining the wall. Anywhere but at his drag mom, or worse, the mirror sitting right before them. “I haven’t really thought about it much,” he lied, fighting the impulse to purse his lips like they had Louis Vuitton’s monogram stamped on them. “Guess I’ve tried to be more accurate about some things? Travel times, ETAs? Only saying ‘I’m on my way’ if I’m actually moving and all of that?”
Well, that and mirror-walking, which was about the only thing he’d gotten out of this sailor senshi thing that hadn’t proven to have some hidden downside or fine print that he hadn’t read properly before signing up. Shame that Order senshi probably couldn’t do it, because honestly, it did immeasurably ease the stress of getting to and from campus, getting to and from a gig, getting to and from home. If only the ability had been open to the proper magical girls, boys, boths, neithers, “none of that for me thanks”ies, enbys, “infinite genders in infinite combinations”es, and everybody elses of Destiny City.… Truly, they would’ve had everything and all the best in life and magical gang wars.
Probably why they couldn’t mirrorwalk, then, on consideration. Unless they could and Reiki was just plain wrong. But if they couldn’t, it would’ve made sense. Getting to have literally everything entailed in What a magical girl is supposed to be……wouldn’t have been fair to everyone else. Already unbalanced as ******** that Order senshi got to have so much as they did: planets up in space to call their own! planets that actually wanted them as said planets’ senshi! planets that could have bioluminescent bunnies or grant them magical glowing space tattoos because said planets loved them so much! a sense of purpose and greater meaning in anything they did! terrible, horrible, no good, very bad, just unforgivably atrocious fashion sense (the predominantly white ensembles, ******** honestly!! Didn’t the great Alpha and Omega magical girl or whoever assigned people’s fukus to them care about giving Order senshi the best outfits for living their best lives, i.e., outfits in literally any color besides white? Did she not love her Order senshi or something?), but still, a chance to use their status as magical girls-or-genders-as-appropriate to make any meaningfully positive difference in anybody’s lives.
Hell, they probably even got to have magic gloves or a fish that talked, if it fell into their sphere.
Either way, Sibyl turned Reiki’s excuse over in her head for a couple moments. Satisfied with the base layer of foundation, she crossed her legs at the knee and leaned back to let the powder cook (settle until she was ready to add her contours and blend it out). With a pensive hum, she shook her head.
“There’s definitely been something different with you. Don’t lie to your Mutha, Turtledove; we matriarchs have a sixth sense for our children’s little untruths.” Smirking playfully, Sibyl pointed her index and middle fingers at her eyes, then pointed them at Reiki. “We can always. tell. when you’ve been naughty like that.”
Lips screwing themselves up in a pout, Reiki nodded. Maybe it wasn’t the case for everyone that adopting someone as you drag child gave you the same ability to detect falsehoods, evasiveness, pointed equivocation, or any other modes of distorting the truth that Reiki had always observed in his Mom-mom. That certainly hadn’t happened with him when he’d adopted Justine Kase Disobedience, after revealing how Certain Gregs Who Shall Remain Nameless had two-timed Justin and Reiki both, then gotten Justin safely away from Reiki’s ******** p***k ex-fiancé. Cherry didn’t entirely have this maternal second sense with Reiki, either.
But Sibyl was different. Not only had she known him longer than anyone else in Destiny City’s queer scene, excluding his actual blood family and his godfather, but she’d given Reiki safe harbor from the ******** s**t-show his blood family had decided to be. Somewhere he could run whenever Satomi was off the wagon after promising she’d stop for real this time, or Dad was yelling at her for trying to get his underage son to buy her tequila just because Reiki happened to be tall and Satomi thought that he could pass for a kid in college, or Ojiisan was pleading with both of them to just stop fighting and talk to each other. Pretty much always, Reiki had been able to bullshit about why he’d slipped out of the house and taken a bus across town to Sibyl’s place.
She never believed him, as she shouldn’t have, but she didn’t call him out, only let him come inside to watch Queer As Folk, or The Wizard of Oz, or Hedwig and the Angry Inch while playing around with makeup, learning how to paint his face, or style a wig, or put on a show like the queens whose performances she had on video or DVD (usually from pageants or bootleg videos from Wigstock, but not always). If anyone in his life, excluding Mom and Obaasan, had any right to read Reiki so hard, the library would get condemned, it had to be Sibyl.
Which made the guilty chill knifing through him twist that much harder. No, he couldn’t lie—not to Sibyl, anyway—but he also couldn’t tell her the truth about this either.
For one thing, would she believe him at all? Even by Destiny City standards, the whole truth and nothing but sounded perfectly ridiculous. What was Reiki supposed to tell her in this situation? “So, Mama, you know, Levi, the boy I like? Well, back in May, he and a talking cat took me to a magic mirror that let me Awaken my magical girl superpowers, one of which is the ability to fast-travel through mirrors—which everyone on our team can do—and it’s really such a time-saver, you have no idea. But on the rather significant downside, I think our team is basically a bunch of magical parasites, I let somebody innocent die because I was too shocked to stand up to the a*****e who killed him, a robot ripped my soul out of my chest, and my magic may not be as bad as I’ve been thinking, but it sure does seem to have gotten me entangled in ******** Something with this raging a*****e who is both literally on fire—like, more flaming than I am by sheer virtue of having a FURNACE in his ******** CHEST, Mama—and also the worst harem anime protagonist ever in the entire world”………?
Uh huh. Sure. Definitely wouldn’t make Reiki sound like a ******** lunatic and risk scaring off from his life one of the people who made it most worth living.
For another, significantly more important thing, though: if he told Sibyl anything about who Kerberos, Fang, Ida, Encke, Anser, Pendour, ******** Arsenolite, Tama, Faustite, Albite, Heliodor, and the rest of Faustite’s ******** harem all thought he was, how could he guarantee that she’d stay safe? Just as the magical girl superpowers inherently carried a responsibility to use them conscientiously, judiciously, and with a mind to be a net-positive force in the universe, didn’t they also come bundled with a responsibility to keep the people he loved safe from the stupidity he’d gotten himself into by wanting so badly to be a magical girl?
With all that in mind—with it in mind how Reiki had unwittingly acquired a Certain Someone Apparently who had, so far, proven himself as capable of reasonable conversation and more or less decent enough behavior as he was of violent, flaming instability, and who happened to be literally on fire, not to mention far more powerful than Reiki on his own and distinctly not in want of a harem of likewise powerful senshi—how could Reiki tell the truth? Wouldn’t knowing the truth put Sibyl at risk of grievous bodily harm or worse? If anybody whose bad side Reiki had gotten on since May found out that Sibyl knew about whatever beef they had?
If Faustite got tired of whatever messy b***h back-and-forth they’d had going on thus far, and instead of just walking away from it and putting Reiki out of his mind, decided to make some kind of point about whom Reiki had actually been dealing with by going after someone who mattered so much to him?
If Remarque had a secret inner b***h lurking underneath his “overall decent, honestly, but distinctly not what Reiki pictured when he heard the phrase ‘magical girl princess’” exterior, and felt inclined to discipline his Court or make an example out of someone?
…………Okay, most likely NOT that last one, the more Reiki thought about it. Sometimes, decent-seeming people didn’t have hidden dark sides. Just because Remarque wasn’t as definitively What A Magical Girl Princess Should Be Like as Ida didn’t mean he was evil. Likewise, being a Prince of Mirrorspace instead of something cool and made of space-magic may not have been his fault. Maybe whoever had Awakened Remarque hadn’t told him about the fine print either and he simply had to make the best of a garbage situation. Unlike Negaverse senshi, they couldn’t purify out of their Court and go be on the objective correct magical girl team (—Reiki still had not fact-checked this assumption of his, but remained happy to cocoon himself in it like a blanket, as if he could shield himself from any unpleasant, contradictory realities by believing hard enough in his chosen explanation).
All of that would’ve given Reiki enough to worry about, and yet, another tangled mess lurked beneath it. How would Sibyl look at him, if she saw Murikabushi? If anyone in their Haus ever chanced to see Reiki all dolled up like that, in that fuku that looked so gorgeous and yet, felt like someone else’s clothes when Reiki let himself really think about things or feel his feelings? Would they ever look at him the same way? Would it be like the stock scene of finding out that your loved one has become a vampire, werewolf, or similar supernatural monster/sexy boyfriend because you see them go completely off their shits, or wolf-out on the full moon, or otherwise reveal to you their sudden, probably recent lack of humanity?
He didn’t want to think it would go like that. So badly, Reiki wanted to feel differently. This wasn’t right of him. Felt like he’d taken up doubting his drag family in a way that didn’t belong among them, didn’t line up with how they treated each other………but how could they ever look at him the same, after some hypothetical encounter with Murikabushi?
In and of itself, something about that feeling left several bad tastes in Reiki’s mouth. His magic hadn’t been the problem. Not really. Thanks to Tama, Reiki felt better about that part……but something about Murikabushi still felt wrong.
Still felt like the monster someone had convinced Faustite that he was, just because he was half-youma instead of human.
Still weighed on his soul, still made his skin crawl and his stomach lurch as if he’d soon be sick all over everything, still felt like oily sludge that reeked like death and decay, and wouldn’t come off, no matter how much he washed his hands.
Idly, Reiki fiddled with his bangs. Tucked them behind his ear. Tried to use his deep inhale for something good, but no matter how much Reiki knew he needed to say something, he couldn’t decide on the right words. Sighing helplessly, he looked from Sibyl over to the door—where Cherry and his husband were coming in, with Theo carrying Cherry’s wig case and wearing some green polka-dot sweater that almost looked like holiday pajamas (ugly but enough so to be intentionally ironic, very Theo’s style).
“Mhmm,” Sibyl said pointedly, reaching for one of the roll-on foundations she used for her contouring. “You getting so quiet and in your head about this, sweetheart? Says that I’m exactly right about something going on.”
“You are, Mama,” Reiki acquiesced, allowing himself another sigh entirely for the sake of feeling Dramatic. “I don’t know how to describe it? Or how much I can tell you? But—it’s been a good thing for me? Parts of it involved in why I’m taking next semester off at school—”
“Should’ve taken this semester off, if we’re honest—”
“Yeah, no, I don’t disagree anymore—”
“Honey, you left your then-fiancé and didn’t do any damn work to unpack anything but your craft room and your books. No, you just carried on like business as usual—”
“I know, Mama.” Reiki huffed, letting himself slouch. “Gonna work on that with the next few months free of any academic obligations or any of that. And the new stuff I’ve been up to did help me realize that you and Cherry have been right this whole time.… And my parents. And my grandparents—at least, the ones who aren’t horrifying fascists……”
Pausing in her work on crafting her face, Sibyl reached over to pat his knee. “Some time to reflect on things will be good for you, Kivya. Reflect, unpack, give yourself room to be as messy as you haven’t been, thus far……”
Oh, no, Mama, Reiki thought. I’ve been plenty messy of late, actually, just not so much in ways that have made anything easier for me.
“So, was all this the thing you needed me for, or……?” Reiki shrugged. “What was the actual ASAP thing we need to talk about?”
“Oh, that—Kivya, it’s the show order. Your ******** sister—Charlotte, I mean. At least she’s my drag step-daughter or whatever, but I swear, between you and her? The inexplicable bullshit quota for our entire Haus will never go unmet.” Rolling her eyes, Sibyl allowed herself a brief shake of the head, then returned to applying contour to her forehead. “Her boyfriend just called me, right before I texted you. They’re at DC Medical Center, the ER—”
“Excuse me, what?!”
“No, no, calm down, he promised that they’re both fine—or at least, they’re not in any kind of immediate danger. Charlotte had some kind of fugue state or something last night? From the sound of it?” Sibyl’s huff came out heated, not entirely unlike a dragon. “I guess she went to some special midnight Mass that they did for Christmas Eve—you probably understand this Catholic nonsense more than I do—but…… The details didn’t get explained to me too well? But she didn’t make it to Mass because she had some episode where it was like everything froze in time, right at midnight, while she was showing up late and going inside.”
“If your goal is to make me not worry, Mama?”
“She is fine, at least physically. Nothing about the episode did any lasting harm. But it rattled her enough that she went to the ER to get checked out—”
“Not too bad a decision, all things considered.” To say the least. What if it had been caused by a youma—the feral-seeming ones that went on rampages, not the ones like Faustite? What if it had happened because of a Mirrorwraith?
“Definitely not, but they’ve been there all day.” Every centimeter of her expression screaming about her exhaustion, she turned to face Reiki. “Can you work some magic for us, babydoll? She was down for three numbers tonight. Ask Cherry for the performance order, and then, can you shake the branches and find some people to fill Charlotte’s slots?”
Reiki didn’t need to think before he nodded. Aside from how the success of the show—making it as best as it could be for the audience—took priority over everything about making this happen, Reiki would never dream of letting his Mama down when he could perfectly manage.
“Probably won’t even take me half-an-hour,” he promised, getting to his feet. As he stretched out, Reiki got the rush of feeling capable, feeling sure that, no matter what, he had this. Hadn’t gotten that rush in far too long. “Leave it all to me, Mama.”
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Posted: Sun Dec 25, 2022 12:57 am
Shaking the branches proved neither easier nor harder than expected, though about half the problem was that not every artist performing tonight had gotten to Scandals as early as Reiki, Sybil, and Cherry had. Even so, Reiki had reliable contact info for several of the queer, drag, and burlesque entertainers working in Destiny City, and certainly everyone whose names showed up on Cherry’s list for tonight.
Two of Charlotte’s slots, he got filled pretty easily: Diamond Espadrille, one of the queens on tonight’s lineup who wasn’t a member of the Haus of Disobedience-and-Poppins, barely needed Reiki to explain the situation before offering to fill one of the slots. Apparently, she’d only asked for two numbers when Cherry was properly booking things because of some tiff with her boyfriend, who had since gotten himself kicked out of the picture over drama that, frankly, sounded like none of Reiki’s ******** business. Not that he wasn’t sympathetic to Diamond or what she’d gone through; he absolutely was. But her personal life was just that exactly: hers. Her own. Not ******** Reiki’s, and he had no business prying into things unless she gave him an invitation.
Another queen from outside Reiki’s own drag family quickly volunteered to fill Charlotte’s second slot. Anarky Wylde—Reiki didn’t know her well, besides knowing that she was new on the scene. As in, “still actively attending DCU, doing drag behind her family’s back, unsure if she was allowed to talk to Reiki on campus or if performing at Scandals was comparable to Fight Club in that one did not talk about it unless one wanted to be disciplined for violating some Very Important Rule.”
……Good thing for Reiki that Scandals was nothing like Fight Club because, honestly, the potential harm to people he loved was often the only thing that kept him from straight-up telling all his lucky b***h Order friends when he had a show.
First and foremost, he’d told Kerberos about the “do not serve me alcohol” bracelets at Scandals, how they’d originally come into being so under-21’s could still come out to the drag shows but had expanded to include people who didn’t drink for all manner of reasons, and how nobody would question or challenge Kerberos about it if he wore one; the bracelet was sacrosanct, as were your reasons for wearing it if they were not immediately related to you not being the legal drinking age. It just……broke Reiki’s heart, how many queers out there found themselves in the exact same position as Kerberos: cut off from other queers to some extent because so much of queer community life, outside of the active political organizing, featured either an upper age-limit or alcohol. Being an adult who’d aged out of the teens-and-youths-focused queer activities but also didn’t drink—who, in fact, couldn’t drink—put so many in that rough spot. At least Kerberos was someone to whom Reiki could extend an offer of compromise.
He’d told Amsvartnir and Bélénos about the same policy—though, being a fellow Dark Mirror senshi, Bélénos could at least hear Reiki claim the name Sayuri Kurobara Disobedience, could know to look for him specifically if she ever came out to the bar, while Amsvartnir only got to hear about how the bar would let him in, as long as he wore the bracelet, so he could be around other queers if he wanted. More than once, he’d prayed that Amsvartnir would take him up on the offer at some point. Even though Reiki wouldn’t recognize him as long as he didn’t show up as Amsvartnir, coming out to Scandals for a night could be a good time for him.
At least, Reiki hoped that Amsvartnir would only show up in a form that Reiki would not recognize, because he liked Amsvartnir, overall trusted him—with the caveat of “I also trust him to be a nineteen-year-old and make average nineteen-year-old mistakes because he is, as mentioned, <******** nineteen”—and Reiki did not personally believe that “Scandals Bar is a safe space where anyone’s faction alliance does not matter as long as they are here in good faith, please respect that” was told big an ask or in want of clarification.
Still, though: Reiki wanted more than this. Knowing that Kerberos and Amsvartnir could come out to Scandals safely if they wanted did help put Reiki’s mind at ease somewhat. Let him be happy for them that they had the option and knew, now, that it existed.…… But he so badly wanted to be there and enjoy it with them.
If not for the threat of danger from some corner for outing himself to them, Reiki might have done it by now. Let his friends get to know him as Reiki. Let them actually meet the real person here, not the ill-fitting, borrowed prom dress being passed off as a pageant gown, which they all called “Murikabushi” and treated as if it were the real person because it was all they’d had access to so far.…… But no matter how much or how badly he wanted to simply spend time with his friends as himself, Reiki remained a Chaos rat. Kerberos didn’t like him saying that, but it was true. And even if his friends would never intentionally snitch about his identity, the Negaverse could still find out about it somehow.
Truly, that was the last thing Reiki needed: the Negaverse threatening his loved ones. Little Miss Can’t-Be-Wrong had gone way too ******** about acting like the Negaverse could somehow discern everything about Reiki and his ******** life from the fact that Amsvartnir had jumped into hugging him on Astraya, and Reiki refused to back down about that point.…… But he could acquiesce that she had something adjacent to a decent point in being worried about those rancid sell-outs.
Not worse as an overall possibility, but in a way that somehow made Reiki feel infinitely more wounded: he categorically did NOT need ******** Faustite ever meeting Reiki.
The universe’s worst harem anime protagonist hating Murikabushi was one thing. It was fine if Faustite hated Murikabushi. Some days, Reiki was right there with him on that, even. Aside from the unintentional practical matters of mirrorwalking and powering up then down again to take his makeup off after a show, what had Murikabushi done for him lately? Moreover, Murikabushi had nothing to do with Reiki. He was nothing about Reiki. The planet by that name hadn’t even wanted him for its senshi, because if it had, then why hadn’t his starseed shown itself for a Mauvian sooner? Something about Murikabushi just left him feeling colder than Mirrorspace and frankly kind of sick.
The Murikabushi who Faustite thought he knew was probably more of a fiction than all the other reflected images that should have been a real person. Not that Reiki knew for sure what Faustite thought he knew about Murikabushi. Probably that he talked too much and apparently existed to create misery for Faustite specifically. Only one of those things would Reiki have personally claimed as character traits, and it was the one he couldn’t rightfully deny. Part of why he’d gotten hauled in for an ADHD diagnosis as a kid was specifically that his teachers at Knightside objected to him talking so much, all the time, whether you wanted him to or not, even in situations when he should have shut the ******** up ten minutes prior.
What Reiki did know was that he had, with varying amounts of intentionality and varying degrees of success, shown Faustite more Persona than real person. Blustering a big game as if it had made him any less insecure about what had happened with Kerberos and with Reiki’s then-borderline-non-functional magic—more masquerade than honest makeup. Hiding behind a smokestack, then all but shutting down when he saw whom, exactly, he was dealing with—more guilty conscience than guileless psyche. Whatever the ******** had happened at the Farnsworth—Reiki didn’t know and at this point, he wasn’t afraid to ask but had resigned himself to the ostensible fact that he probably wouldn’t like the answer. Trying to be cool, stand-offish, and unbothered—more façade than true face, and what had it accomplished aside from making Faustite try to go postal on Reiki and Tama, then run off into the night after Reiki had thrown out an attack in self-defense.
Granted, Faustite was hardly stupid, and when Reiki did try to dissemble with him, it tended to come from some kind of real place. In all likelihood, Faustite had a better measure of Reiki than Reiki wanted to give him credit for—but the fact remained: as long as Faustite hated Murikabushi, and *NOT* Reiki, Faustite would hate a simulacrum more than the actual person. Like that, he could only hurt Reiki so much.
…………Bold thoughts for the only one of the two of them who’d done any actual damage to the other, but in fairness, Faustite seemingly actually wanted to hurt Reiki. Fair game for Reiki to stay prepared, then.
Either way, Faustite wasn’t at Scandals. No matter how insistently thoughts of him plagued Reiki, they were only thoughts. Only feelings. And frankly stupid, painfully egocentric ones, at that. No better than Faustite acting like a handful of chance meetings constituted willful attempts by Reiki at stalking him. As if Faustite didn’t have better things to think about than a Dark Mirror pain-in-his-a** who had done him harm before, yes, but was still only a basic senshi, as far as he knew.
Either way, Anarky Wylde hadn’t gotten much of a chance to make her name in the Destiny City drag scene, yet. Getting a foot in the door could be every bit as much about whom you knew as it was about your talent and dedication. Unfortunate, and thanks, Reiki hated it, because he knew how it so easily came off as gatekeeping to the new performers in town—or just led to genuine gatekeeping. But he also knew that it didn’t entirely come out of ill will on anybody’s help. More often than not—at least in his personal experience specifically in Destiny City’s queer scene—such things tended to come out of people just……trying to help their friends. Because they were friends and they wanted the best for each other.
However she’d come to be this way, Anarky Wylde……didn’t seem to have very many friends, yet. As far as Reiki could tell, it hadn’t been an issue of her being irascible, shady, unfairly bitchy, unwilling to compromise or help anyone else out if need be, or otherwise impossible to work with. All their backstage or on-campus interactions had been pleasant enough. So, since she’d be here for the show tonight anyway, and since she’d only put herself out there for one number when everyone else had at least two lined up, why not extend her the offer first?
With her confirmation that she had another number ready, Reiki slid back to his texts. Started firing off a group-text to Anarky and Diamond, before remembering that, without a third performer lined up, it didn’t make sense to discuss preferences for which of Charlotte’s slots anybody took. Scrolled through the lengthy list of names. But held himself up on one that, honestly, had nothing to do with any of what Reiki was supposed to be doing. Chickens had more business trying to solve problems in nuclear physics than Reiki had sending texts to this person right now, when he had a show and a performance order to help reassemble.
But on the other hand, how much time did Reiki really have here? Monoceros wanted out of the Negaverse. He deserved to get that. However it wound up happening, he needed to get out so he could be himself and be ******** happy, like he deserved.…… So, soon, he’d be just like Kerberos and Amsvartnir. Another friend who wouldn’t get to spend time with Reiki, only with Murikabushi. Another friend who’d always call Reiki by a name that didn’t feel like his and, increasingly, Just Felt Wrong.
Would Monoceros even remember Reiki, after getting the Negaverse taint burned out of his starseed? Lysithea had gotten her memories all scrambled by getting out, and back when they’d first met, Toráin had seemed to indicate that getting dragged into the Negaverse had messed with his memories and his sense of self. Valjean, too, for that matter—he didn’t remember a damn thing about his old life and whatever ******** had dragged him into the Negaverse had practically made him thank them for it.
So……in all likelihood, Monoceros wouldn’t remember Reiki. Even if he did, it wasn’t as if Reiki could tell him anything. Couldn’t claim, as Murikabushi, that those memories were about him because what if the bastards who’d dragged Monoceros into the Negaverse in the first place did something to read his mind, and pull out Reiki’s name, and use it to come after the people he loved?
What if they gave it to Faustite, or what if he was just involved in all of ******** might have been one of Reiki’s last chances to invite Toráin to one of his shows like he could do with Sappho or Bélénos. Definitely his last chance to invite Toráin to a show like this. He had work to do, he knew that, but ******** it, work could wait half-a-minute longer.
texts to Toráin [Hey heart I know this is last minute, and I’m sorry for that, and there is NO PRESSURE if you can’t because I know you might have people to be with tonight, and that’s very fair heart ]
[But if it’s something you might be into? We’re having a little Christmas Eve show down at Scandals]
[Crowd should be smaller than usual, not so overwhelming. This b***h isn’t hosting (my drag moms are), but I’m performing, and if it’s something you might like, I’d really like to see you there? heart ]
[But if you can’t make it, I promise that’s also okay heart ]
[Just please give me a head’s up before you do That Thing we talked about, so I don’t spam this number with a bunch of cute animal memes like I did before]
As if it made some kind of point—though Reiki could not honestly say what that point thought it was doing with itself, or why it had decided to strip buck naked and run across the DCU quad while declaring itself a God-Emperor of space and time—he sent Toráin another of said memes. Reiki rather liked this one, a photo of a dejected-looking white cat with a red balloon and red decorations on the white walls around him; in black-outlined, white Impact font, the words “Communist cat / misunderstands ‘party.’”
……So, there.
He’d sent out the invitation. Whether Toráin accepted it or not, whether or not he was even free to accept it right now, Reiki could at least say that he’d made the offer. All he could do was breathe, accept whatever Toráin decided, and get back to work on finding a third fill-in performer. This show order wasn’t going to save itself.
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Posted: Sun Dec 25, 2022 2:36 am
Unfortunately for Reiki, he could only shake so many branches, and shake them so much besides, before he was forced to admit: nobody else wanted Charlotte’s third spot.
In fairness to everyone, pretty much everybody was booked for three numbers already. The only ones who weren’t either had two numbers (still quite a bit to handle, especially for newer performers), were hosting the gig tonight (Sibyl and Cherry, who knew full well that one did not mix hosting with numbers unless one wanted to suffer), or had asked about being included and helping out where possible, despite usually being a fixture at Piano Bar Wednesdays rather than any of the drag shows (his name was Jesse and Reiki liked what he’d seen during some rehearsals with him, Brandy, Justine, and Margarita).
On the plus, Reiki had come prepared for a reason. Outfit, wig, music, all lined up and ready to go. He’d need to log into google drive on Matt’s laptop so he could get the video portion of Reiki’s “it’s the music, not the story” number, but he couldn’t do that until Matt got here anyway. In the meantime, once Anarky Wylde and Diamond Espadrille had declared their own preferences for where they went in the show order, Reiki had taken the time to make sure the projector still worked (it did), nothing was broken (it wasn’t), and the projection screen upstage would come down properly when Matt and Katie used the remote (it would).
On the potentially squiffy tentacle of uncertainty, however, Reiki needed to make a call. Not that he expected it to go poorly—on the contrary, that would have shocked him—but……time was of the essence, and that did always make for anxiety. Still, if he didn’t make the call, he couldn’t do the number, so he sucked it up and clicked the name out of his saved Favorites.
“So, what are you wearing,” the guy on the other end said instead of ‘hello.’ “Something cute and slutty, obviously, but aside from that….?”
“Think you might be disappointed actually, Gorgeous.” Leaning against a wall in the backstage labyrinth, Reiki snorted as he glanced down at his outfit: thermal tights and leggings on top of them instead of thigh-highs like he usually preferred; a short skirt but not too short, made out of heavy, weather-ready material; and layered shirts with a cardigan on top, and his hoodie currently tied around his waist. “I guess the Barbie pumps you got me for my birthday are cute and slutty, but by my standards, I dressed pretty sensibly.”
“And I’m about to chuck three French hens at my current problem.”
“……Excuse me?”
“Slime Rancher, ********,” Yuki clarified, sounding very pleased with himself about it. “You throw chickens at things for reasons that make sense in context. Promised my niece and nephew we’d play together for Christmas, but since all the flights back home got canceled due to freak winter storms? Sort of stuck playing by myself, at the moment.… Decided to gussy the chickens up and make them festive because……why not, right?”
Reiki sighed, and didn’t try to keep himself from sounding sad. “……I’m sorry you can’t get back to Minneapolis, Gorgeous.”
“You don’t need to be.”
“I’m not saying that like it’s my fault or anything? Just—the weather isn’t gonna apologize for itself, and I know you really wanted to see the niblings.”
“I did, yeah.… Do, if we’re honest? Very still in the present-tense. But……” A deep breath, and a heavy sigh, and oh, how Reiki wished that Yuki was just……right here with him, right now, for purposes of hugging. “Bad things happen every day. Sucks, but statistically speaking, you’re incapable of living a life without them, right?”
“Yeah.… Ain’t that the truth.… Plus, what would the good things even mean without anything to compare them to?” Mussing a hand over his hair, Reiki asked, “So, are you gonna stay at your place and Slime Rancher all night, or….?”
“Or what? Miss one of the only things that can make this all worth missing Christmas with my brother, our sister, and their kids?” Yuki laughed as if the answer should’ve been obvious—and, in a lot of ways, it was? But even so, assuming would’ve been rude. “Of course I’ll be at Scandals for your show, ********. Plus, your family’s for the proper holiday tomorrow. Could even walk you home, if you wanted.”
Well, it would have meant no mirrorwalking or powering up for the cold resistance and extra speed, but…… “You could even stay, if you wanted.”
“Since you’re offering, I just might.” Reassuring to hear, at least until Yuki followed it up with an apprehensive sound. “Actually, scratch that on walking. If it keeps snowing like this, I’ll pay for us to get an Uber home from Scandals, yeah?”
“Sounds like a date, but—hey, while I’ve got you anyway?” Not a difficult question to ask. Not a difficult question to ask. Perfectly easy and straightforward.… “D’you still remember that Full Metal Jacket dialogue from my one number? The clip with Modine and Papillon Soo?”
“Why? You’re not doing it for a Christmas show, are you?”
Reiki made a noise like the vocal equivalent of a shrug. “Needs to be something in here to let people breathe in between Elijah making ‘Santa Daddy’ a thing that’s just happening now then strip-teasing to it, and Diamond Espadrille’s ‘Home For The Holidays’ number. I’m not telling you what she has labeled as ‘home’ in very glittery letters? But let’s just say that I hear the peach cobbler is delicious.”
“It’s her a**, isn’t it?”
“I neither confirm nor deny anything, Gorgeous. You’ll just have to wait and see, and when you do? You’ll understand why I think we needed some non-holiday numbers in here to spice things up.”
“So, basically, you’re telling me to get there soon? Get a table close to the stage and be ready to ask what I can get for ten dollars?” For all Yuki tried to sound very put upon, he couldn’t keep the smile out of his voice.
“Don’t worry too much. I’ll get a table saved for you.” Pushing off the wall, Reiki headed back toward the dressing room. “But if you could help me talk my brother into joining you, so the ‘Each you, fifteen dollar’ line makes any earthly sense? I’d be much obliged.”
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Posted: Sun Dec 25, 2022 1:47 pm
All the performance slots—appropriately filled.
Any vacancies that emerged in the show order—shuffled around to make sure someone did a number.
Enough time for any backstage shenanigans, hijinks, case studies in Murphy’s Law, or otherwise seeing everything try its damn best to go sideways—baked right in, and if need be, Reiki and Brandy knew full well how to get their asses onstage and help one, the other, or both of their drag moms vamp to fill time.
Despite how many shows he’d done since he could start performing at age eighteen—despite how many Christmas Eve shows he’d done specifically—part of Reiki still vibrated with nerves as he worked on applying the eye makeup for his first number: colored and blended to be nearly indistinguishable from his natural eyelids if you couldn’t clock the subtle tricks he’d used to make his eyes seem bigger, but with enough frosted-on glitter to, A., sparkle and be cute, and B., look like he’d just come in from the snow outside. Also, easy to remove between numbers so he could change things up somewhat. His main face, he kept simple on its base, pretty and dramatic but adaptable enough to fit with each of Reiki’s numbers for the evening. That way, he’d only need to adjust the paint around his eyes. One less thing to worry about.
Yet, Reiki’s nerves still itched as if it were his first time getting on the Scandals stage.
Buffing out the different shades of neutral tan, that took his mind off things a little bit. Not nearly enough, though, to completely dull the edges of his central worry: what if something BAD happens and we CAN’T somehow make the best of it.
Of course, the performers on deck for tonight would make the best of it. Come what may, they all knew their s**t, and anyone whose experience might have lacked had plenty of backup who could cover for them.
Sitting beside him at the workbench, Elijah slouched onto his elbows with a loud, dramatic groan. A quick glance over at his drag sibling didn’t tell Reiki very much: Elijah’s face was still only half-on, but stray guess said he wanted to let his powders cook tonight before getting into the weeds with however he felt like contouring. Ripping off one of his blue latex gloves didn’t seem to help whatever was eating him, though it did let Elijah ruffle a hand over his hair without getting it covered in makeup.
Then again, doing that didn’t seem to help him much, either.
At least he explained himself—after some fashion—soon enough, grousing, “Are you sure you can’t talk your dad into coming tonight?”
“……I never said that I couldn’t talk him into coming,” Reiki pointed out, dropping his hands from his eyes. “I told you that it’s not very likely, because Dad has some hang-ups that I’m not really at liberty to discuss without his permission. But he could still decide to show up.”
“It’s just not faaaaaair.” Briefly, Elijah reached up like he meant to scratch at his nose. But he caught himself soon enough. Didn’t go mess up his foundation. Took to drumming his fingertips on the table instead. “Listen, when Kitty VonDutchess told me she needed to not do one of her numbers? Of course I said ******** ‘yes,’ right? Who’s gonna say ‘no’ to another chance at making some tips?”
“Quite a lot of people, actually,” Reiki told him, thinking of how difficult it had been to get Charlotte’s third slot filled, how he’d wound up doing it himself. “Not that this entirely invalidates your point, though.”
“My point is just that it’s not fair.” Probably, Reiki shouldn’t have entertained this whining out of Eli so much. Sibyl and Cherry generally preferred to shut it down quick when he got like this. But if Eli was upset about what Reiki thought was on his mind—“I worked so hard on that ‘Stacy’s Dad’ number, right? Had to find someone to reshoot that iconic scene from The Graduate with me and everything. ‘Mr. Robinson, I think you’re trying to seduce me,’ except make it slut. Make it ho. Make it me, sounding overjoyed for my dear-friend-and-big-sister’s hot dad to decide he felt like seducing me, because I would sound like that IRL……”
Yep, there it was. Reiki had correctly guessed what specific complaint had taken to eating at his brother.
Strictly speaking, Reiki somewhat doubted what Elijah had to say about how down for it he would have sounded if faced with seduction by one, Dr. Hikaru Rokugin. As much as Elijah liked to play up a certain degree of (hyper)sexuality and sluttaciousness onstage, he and Reiki came from the same designer’s spring/summer haute couture collection on that point. Both Dorian Gay and Sayuri Kurobara Disobedience acted like major tramps, but when left to their own devices, they didn’t sleep around nearly as much as their numbers might have led someone to believe.
“But after all that work I put into the number,” Elijah drawled like he was truly the most put-upon little bunny ever known to humanity, “it’s gonna be so ******** miserable if the Dad who inspired it won’t be here to see it.”
Reiki wanted to roll his eyes. Would’ve been rude to his drag brother, though. Maybe Elijah’s central complaint seemed silly, but either he had some genuine hurt going on that he didn’t want to talk about, or he actually did feel like his Artistic Integrity would somehow end up compromised if he couldn’t highlight which Dad in the bar belonged to the sister he’d sweet-talked into playing “Stacy” for him.
So, instead, Reiki closed those eyes and took a deep breath.
“Perform it in the living room when you come over tomorrow,” he calmly offered as a sort of compromise. “Maybe not the most elegant solution? Definitely won’t have as much room to maneuver. But Mom will think it’s adorable and creative, and Obaasan will love it. Hinami’s pissed she can’t be here tonight, so—”
“Hey, Sayuri!”
Perking up, Reiki whipped his head around, tried to find the source of the noise. The part of him wound up so tightly in his anxiety? It expected to find somebody bringing him another crisis that he needed to fix before showtime.
Instead, he found Brandy, sauntering over to him and Elijah, with her face already painted on so immaculately but her first wig of the evening—a mass of fluffy brown curls, so big that it had to be full of secrets—in her hand rather than on her head. She didn’t have her pads or tits on either, though she had her waist-cincher done up right.
Cocking a hip, Brandy smirked. “Somebody here to see you, cher.”
“……Yuki?” Reiki wrinkled his nose. Yuki could have come backstage for any number of reasons, but only the bad ones were coming to Reiki’s mind right now. “Is everything okay?”
“Naw, ‘s not Yuki. He could announce himself if he wanted to come back here.”
Maybe it was the undeniable sensibility of the point, maybe it was Brandy’s warm and cozy New Orleans drawl. But whatever the cause, Reiki felt somewhat calmer and more assured as he pulled himself up to his feet. Following her past one of the full-length mirrors Reiki had sometimes used to mirrorwalk back home and out to the hallway, Reiki tried to swallow down any expectation, any unnecessary anxieties.
Good thing he did, because the sight waiting for him elicited a gasp—but a pleasant one.
“What…… What are you all doing here?”
Before anyone else could try, Reiki’s twin brother snorted and grinned. “What, like only a secret cabal of elite sorcerers can get into your shows?”
“Oh, ******** off,” Reiki huffed, pulling that idiot into a hug. He still only wore the messy old shirt he wore for putting on his face. No worries about letting his pads or tits get messed up by interpersonal physical contact.
Laughing good-naturedly, Junsei hugged him back. “Why don’t you ******** off if someone has to do it so badly.”
Junsei didn’t require any explanation, at least. His presence only said that Yuki had gotten Reiki’s twin to put on a jacket and come out to the bar. But standing beside him, to Junsei’s right, Mom smiled warmly and leaned into Dad’s side. Although he looked somewhat uncertain, like some part of him expected one of the decorative garlands hung all over the bar to come to life and start attacking people. (Come to think, Reiki couldn’t rightfully say that wasn’t worth somebody being concerned. By Destiny City standards, festive garlands turning into monsters didn’t sound that implausible, actually, especially not in light of how things tended to go on the magical girl side of the equation.)
“What your brother means to say,” Mom interjected, “is that we came out to watch the show. Especially since you’re in it.”
The two figures on Junsei’s left held a similar position—tall, broad-shouldered Rokugin husband with an arm around the shoulders of his strong-willed, opinionated wife—but as Reiki let his brother go, he turned to his grandparents with a mind to fret. Both of them smiled as if nothing was wrong in this, the best of all possible worlds. ……Well, Obaasan distinctly looked like she was Up To Something, but that was genuinely just her face.
“Are we supposed to let you go unsupported?” With a soft hmmm, Obaasan shrugged as if no one could dare imagine how to argue against her. Certainly Reiki didn’t want to. “Even if we can’t make it to every show, tonight is special.”
“Mitch and Sidney are helping Yuki hold down the table,” Dad chimed in, answering the unasked question about where Reiki’s godfather and his husband were. Yeah, Dad still looked quite a bit uneasy, but glad to be here regardless. Which helped ease Reiki’s mind a little bit, he supposed?
“But—Ojiisan?” Reiki’s anxiety there had yet to abate any, so he looked back to his grandfather. “Are you gonna be okay? I mean, it—it’s a bar.”
“That does not mean your ojiisan needs to drink, Kivya.” By way of illustrating his meaning, Ojiisan held out his right arm. As his wrist nudged past the cuff of his overcoat, Reiki caught the flash of an orange wristband—the “do not serve alcohol” bracelets they’d been using all month. With a serious expression, Ojiisan explained, “Your Aunt Satomi did not feel well enough to come—in the specific way you’re afraid of, yes. But I did feel well and quite secure, so……”
Smiling enigmatically, Ojiisan shrugged in the same way that Reiki did whenever Toráin marveled at how Reiki was willing to just treat him to a meal, or when Amsvartnir made the puzzled face like “how do you know ever so many queer things to share with me like this.” The way that Reiki had unquestionably learned from trailing along behind his grandparents as a kid, so attentively loyal to Obaasan, who had always seemed more like a real superhero to him than idiots like Batman, Green Lantern, or the Hulk, but also trying so hard to emulate his Ojiisan. Never entirely growing past his fascination with the fact that Reiki would have been personal named Kiyoshi, after his grandfather, as Ojiisan had been named for his own grandfather. One of the ways the Rokugins had adopted the culture of their American neighbors after leaving Japan in the mid-19th-century.… A tradition with a few generations under it.
But Ojiisan hadn’t been sober at the time. Reiki had never heard what had happened to knock his grandfather off the wagon, that time, only that it had happened, that Reiki, Junsei, and cousin Erika being born had gotten Ojiisan to clean up again, and that he hadn’t done it before Reiki had, as the firstborn grandchild, been given a name other than Kiyoshi Rokugin.
Idly, he wondered how Kiyoshi Rokugin the Younger was faring, in any of the timelines where their Ojiisan had been sober at their birth. Would he have Awakened as Sailor Murikabushi, if such magical girl business still existed? Would he have Awakened to Order? The Negaverse? The Dark Mirror, as Reiki had done? If that Kiyoshi Rokugin had Awakened as Dark Mirror Murikabushi like Reiki, did the role chafe against his soul like it did for Reiki? Or would he have adjusted to the role quite happily?
Whatever his timeline was like, Reiki hoped that the version of him who’d gotten to bear the name Kiyoshi was happy.
For his own part, Reiki took the chance to hug his parents and grandparents. He needed to finish getting ready, but—they’d come out for the show, just because he was in it. So some of his blood family would be at the bar with his drag family. Just because.
Swanning back to his work station and to Elijah, Reiki told him, “Guess whose lucky star just rose over a manger in Bethlehem, little brother.”
A sign like “!!!” might as well have popped into being above Elijah’s head, he brightened up so much. “You’re the best, Kiki.”
“I didn’t do a damn thing. My parents and my grandparents just decided they felt like coming.”
“Yeah. Because of you. Because you have that kind of way about you.” Sighing dreamily, Elijah shook his head. “God, your Dad is so ******** hot. It’s almost rude of him, honestly.”
Without agreeing or condemning, Reiki nodded and reached for his container of silvery glitter.
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Posted: Sun Dec 25, 2022 7:49 pm
Some numbers had so many moving parts that it wasn’t even funny. Costume-changes, wig-flips, backup dancers or ripoffs of Dita Von Teese’s martini glass routine if a queen really had the budget. But sometimes, a queen didn’t need to invent the wheel as long as she put on a good show.
That principle informed most of the choices in Reiki’s first number. Only new thing about it was his outfit: knee-high black boots with quite respectable heels (a gift that Reiki had bought himself for his last birthday), a rainbow-striped scarf that Reiki had knitted himself, and a knee-length black overcoat, stoned simply for the sake of sparkle and currently worn somewhat like a little black dress. With it buttoned up and nothing specific visible beneath it, the coat teased that Reiki might have something slutty on beneath it. (He did. But that would come later.)
Thing was, too many bells and whistles would have distracted from the real point of everything……from the familiar, mid-tempo synthpop track playing as Cherry handed him the mic she’d used to call Sayuri Kurobara Disobedience out onto the stage……from the doe-eyed look that Sayuri threw to the audience as she started singing:
“Last Christmas, I gave you my heart, but the very next day, you gave it away.…”
She’d done this last year, too. And the year before that. And every year since her first ever holiday show at Scandals, when a live performance of “Last Christmas” and a slutty lip-synch of “Santa Claus Got Stuck In My Chimney” had been her only numbers.
“This year, to save me from tears, I’ll give it to someone special.…”
The special someone whom Reiki had in mind wasn’t here, or at least Reiki didn’t think he was. He’d told Levi about the show, of course, but……well, Elijah was the only Jewish performer on the docket tonight. Then, his father was a similar cocktail of Shinto-Buddhist-Christian as the Rokugins, and none of his numbers tonight would be Hanukkah-themed. Reiki hesitated to describe “Santa Daddy” and “Soylent Night” as Christian, but both of them used Christmas music as their bases, so they were definitely closer to Christian than Jewish. His Jack Skellington medley was even closer to Christian than the others, since it didn’t get overtly religious? But in the movie, none of Tim Burton and Henry Selick’s tree-portals to different holiday worlds had had a menorah on it. And “Stacy’s Dad”………well.
“Stacy’s Dad” was about how hot Elijah thought Reiki’s Dad was.
All up, Reiki could understand why Levi wouldn’t want to come to a Christmas Eve show at Scandals. The overlap with Hanukkah this year could’ve had potential, but nobody had wanted to go there. Sitting through that as a Jewish person could understandably have been awkward.
“Once bitten, and twice shy. I keep my distance, but you still catch my eye. Tell me, baby, do you recognize me?…”
Reiki went back and forth on how to answer that question. As Sayuri, crossing downstage the same as always, he couldn’t imagine that she looked any different from usual. Her long, straight, violently blonde wig might not have looked like she’d styled it, but getting it like this when Reiki had last put it into Harley Quinn pigtails had been an absolute chore. Unadorned, it didn’t look like much, but it didn’t need to.
“Happy Christmas,” she stage-whispered, exaggerating it as she might have done otherwise, but sticking true to the original song’s presentation. Unlike Ashley Tisdale, Backstreet Boys, and the ******** cast of Glee, Reiki knew better than to distort this song beyond recognition or oversell it when it could perfectly speak for itself. “I wrapped it up and sent it, with a note saying ‘I love you,’ I meant it. Now, I know what a fool I’ve been—”
Her voice wobbled, but at least it sounded close enough to her vibrato. Still, Reiki knew that wasn’t what had happened; he’d let his voice wobble. Belted that line in particular in a way that Reiki hadn’t quite intended. Worse, he only realized he hadn’t meant that feeling about Greg……in the little, momentary flash when he felt the absence of romantic subtext racketing around his heart, probably about to get slapped with a noise complaint from his lungs and ribcage. “But if you kissed me now, I know you’d fool me again. Last Christmas, I gave you my heart, but the very next day……”
Good thing so many green paper bills waving around caught Reiki’s eye. Collecting tips would get him out of his head. Had to wander past the piano, where sat a Santa hat and an old CD player that hadn’t actually played music in ages, but that could still have a second life as a stage prop, down into the maze of tables, where people held out their money for him. He didn’t count the bills as he scooped them up, only stuffed them in his overcoat’s pockets. Bad form for anybody, counting your tips in the middle of a performance.
“Crowded room, friends with tired eyes. I’m hiding from you and your soul of ice.…” Playing demure and wounded could have so easily veered into camp, and Reiki desperately hoped that, as Sayuri, he’d avoid sashaying so delicately over that line. It would’ve been like performing a slowed down, melancholy, angst-ridden version of “Fastlove,” Ms. Adele Laurie Blue Adkins, she of “Rolling In The Deep” and “Someone Like You”: an utter disservice to George Michael’s fantastic songwriting. “My god, I thought you were someone to rely on. Me?”
Glancing over his shoulder, narrowing his eyes, Sayuri threw an utterly arctic glare at Junsei, because Reiki knew that his brother wouldn’t take it personally. “I guess I was a shoulder to cry on.”
With an admitted dramatic flourish, Sayuri turned to face the audience—definitely smaller than usual for a Saturday show, but that was just expected. As she walked backwards toward the stage, Sayuri used her free hand to unbutton her overcoat. “A face-on lover with a fire in his heart.…
“A man undercover, but you tore me apart.…” Around center-stage, she smoothly pivoted around. Back to the audience, she slipped her coat off her shoulders as if offering to slip into something more comfortable. From behind, a perfect glimpse of red spaghetti straps. Depending on your angle, perhaps a hint of white faux-fur.
“Ooooh, oooooh.…” And when she spun back to face the audience, the ensemble she’d held out on showing off revealed itself: the white faux-fur lined both the top hem of her indecently tight tank-top and the bottom hem of her sinfully short, red pleather skirt. Around her waist sat a wide black belt with a rhinestoned buckle.
Giving the audience very “Mrs. Claus’s slutty little sister who thinks that you look like her next mistake” energy.
“Now I’ve found a real love; you’ll never fool me again.…”
Without an apparent care in the world, not even for the money in its pockets, Sayuri tossed her coat over onto the piano. Fortunately, she knocked over neither the Santa hat nor the prop CD player. She hardly moved while she finished the song, and only acknowledged the tips being thrown forward when she’d finished.
By the time she collected them up—shunting them into her bra for safekeeping—people were still applauding. Reiki preferred to corpse as little as possible, while up on the stage, but in this moment, he couldn’t help himself. His foundation covered up his blush—would’ve been the same cherry red as his outfit; he felt that in how much his cheeks heated up—but the audience still got to see Miss Sayuri Kurobara Disobedience bowing her head and looking away as a broad, appreciative smile blossomed on her face. Got to hear all of her breathless “thank you”s.
Almost made Reiki feel too awkward to say his next line: “That…… So, a b***h loves that song, right? It is known. But that’s almost a little too melancholy to start a show like this—what d’you think?”
From the overall silence, punctuated by befuddled, uncertain noises, the audience had no idea what they thought. Nevertheless, as Sayuri grabbed the Santa hat off the piano and nudged the CD player closer to the edge, she kept her attitude upbeat.
“Well, I think we could get some better energy going in here,” she said, fixing the hat on her head, really completing the North Pole, but make it ho fantasy. “Could the rest of Santa’s Helpers please join me on the stage?”
Thusly summoned, Justine Kase Disobedience, Margarita Disobedience Michelada, and Brandy Alexander pranced out from backstage. All three of them wore slutty red outfits identical to Sayuri’s. Only their wigs were different: Brandy’s cloud of brown, honey-toned curls seemed ever so full of secrets; Margarita’s looked similar enough to Sayuri’s, just shorter, a slightly lighter shade of blonde, and somehow, less immaculate; and Justine’s wig seemed like a dead ringer for Sayuri’s in terms of styling and looking more expensive than it really had been, except it came in gingery reddish-orange. From audience-left to audience-right, they lined up with Justine, then Sayuri, then Brandy, and Margarita on the end.
Over with Reiki’s family, Junsei rolled his eyes and tried to bury himself in his drink. At least he had the decency not to groan out loud.
In case anyone else missed the reference baked into this idea of Justine’s—just in case they couldn’t guess what song would play when Brandy set down the mics and pretended to turn on the CD player, or how it would fake-skip and then cut out entirely when Sayuri stage-pushed her and she knocked it off the piano—she’d taken Sibyl’s mic out onstage with her so she could join Sayuri in some explanatory dialogue.
“Uh, Brandy?” Sayuri drawled with all the rich b***h teenager petulance he could find in his heart. “Switch sides with Justine.”
Brandy gasped softly, contorting her face into an utterly aghast, confused, and frankly hurt expression, as if someone had just asked her to wring a baby bunny’s neck with her bare hands. “But I’m always on your left!”
“Well, that was when there were three of us,” Sayuri clapped back crisply, “and now, the tallest go in the middle.”
It helped that Justine was actually taller than Brandy and Margarita, though not quite as tall as Sayuri.
“But the whole dance will be backwards,” Brandy insisted, working herself up into a truly camp as tits parody of genuine panic. “I’m always on your left!!”
“And right now, you’re getting on my last. nerve. Switch!” Pursing her lips, Sayuri waited for Brandy to skulk dejectedly into Justine’s place while Justine slipped into the middle, where Brandy had been. Once they were in place, Sayuri threw a winning smile out at the crowd. “Friends, queer babes, countrymen, we are Santa’s Helpers, and this is ‘Jingle Bell Rock.’”
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Posted: Wed Dec 28, 2022 1:26 pm
One distinct upshot of holiday-themed shows: even the more complicated numbers tended to be pretty straightforward on a thematic level. For one thing, this simplicity (often but not always) made choreographing and rehearsing such numbers easier for most performers than a number with a more complicated artistic idea behind it than “it is Christmas and I can perform, please spread joy and goodwill, and also give me tip money.” In turn, this tended to make performers more amenable to compromise, adjusting their personal schedules, and otherwise avoiding any totally unmanageable diva behavior and/or assorted nonsense.
Moreover, the relative cohesion between numbers for a show like this also made things far simpler from a production standpoint. Holiday numbers all tended to flow into each other pretty seamlessly regardless of arrangement, even in shows with actual Hanukkah or Kwanzaa numbers amidst the Christmas ones. Like as not, no one in the audience would notice for better or worse if the show order needed jimmy-rigging, even at the absolute last minute, to accommodate any backstage SNAFUs because, from an audience perspective, there wasn’t that much difference between Dorian Gay coquetting all over the floor, getting progressively more naked, and making puppy-eyes while treating Santa like his sugar daddy, and Diamond Espadrille doing “Home For The Holidays” while dressed like a camped up Stepford Wife, with the Big Reveal being that she did, indeed, have “HOME” written on the a**-cheeks of her panties, in hot pink glitter letters.
Or, as things had actually played out tonight, not much difference existed between Miss Diamond’s “Home For the Holidays” number and Miss Sayuri strip-teasing out of his gussied up but overall faithful tribute to Judy Garland in Meet Me In St. Louis while lip-synching to her performance of “Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas” from the same movie.
Even something like Reiki’s Frozen number wouldn’t throw off the show-order terribly much. True, Idina Menzel and Caissie Levy sang nothing overtly Christmas-flavored in Reiki’s mishmash assemblage of “Let It Go” (Idina), “Monster” (Caissie), and “Show Yourself” (Idina, with Evan Rachel Wood). According to Reiki’s rearrangement of Sibyl and Cherry’s initial show-order (sadly, it had not worked out to just slot himself, Anarky, and Diamond into Charlotte’s vacated performance slots, when you accounted for costume, hair, and makeup changes), Disney-Elsa’s inescapable winter-theming would fit right in between Dorian’s “Santa Daddy” number and a multi-performer number that Brandy had organized, medleying together musical selections and dialogue from A Muppet Christmas Carol.
If not for how this past semester had gone, Reiki might have gotten involved in that Muppets number himself, but……well. Getting starseeded by a robot back in August had thrown things off considerably, and then he and Faustite had continued Happening to each other, and ******** Hell, Reiki was supposed to have been preparing to defend his Master’s thesis in the spring, but he’d barely even done anything.
Worse yet, he’d really thought himself clever, if not brilliant, once upon a time, when he’d proposed using an autoethnography of his own drag performances as the backbone of said Master’s thesis. For the most part, it had gotten him out of needing any IRB review, or at least not as much as he would’ve needed if he’d been trying to interview other people. Moreover, Judith Butler, bell hooks, José Esteban Muñoz, and most others who’d written about drag artistry in their wake had only written about other people’s performances. While valuable to varying degrees [Judith Butler’s dubious, White Feminist hot takes on Paris Is Burning notwithstanding], such work lacked the intimacy and actual statement to artistic intentions of an autoethnography that modeled pieces of its methodology on Toni Morrison’s close-reading of Beloved from “Unspeakable Things Unspoken.”
Alright, fine, that idea had sounded cute before Reiki had run headlong into the magical girl life……but how the Hell was he supposed to explain a number he’d been working on but not yet debuted, its inspiration inherently linked to experiences Reiki wouldn’t have had without the magical girl life? As of its most recent mix, the number combined pieces of Pet Shop Boys’ “It’s A Sin,” Klaus Nomi’s cover of “You Don’t Own Me,” “All You Wanna Do” from Six, Scissor Sisters’ “I Can’t Decide,” a certain “Tear You Apart,” Rina Sawayama’s “Frankenstein,” dialogue from both Doug Bradley’s original, power-dom take on Clive Barker’s Hell-Priest (Hellraiser (1987) and Hellbound: Hellraiser II) and Jamie Clayton’s more ethereal and insidious interpretation of the character (Hellraiser (2022)), Corpse Husband’s “E-GIRLS ARE RUINING MY LIFE!” and an ostensible desire on the number’s part to give Reiki his death by aneurysm. Getting things how he wanted them had proven every bit as troublesome as the walking talking fire-hazard who’d inspired him to put this all together in the first place. He hadn’t remotely thought about costuming or choreography for all of this yet, much less his hair and makeup. Truly, he’d worried more about whether or not he could include something that increasingly mattered a great deal to him in his autoethnographic assessment of his own drag.
Not that Reiki entirely blamed himself for that anxiety. Sure, he had all his academic backing lined up—abjection per Julia Kristeva (and more recent work nuancing her original concept, itself nearly 40 years old by now); monster theory and the queer Gothic per Jeffrey Jerome Cohen and George E. Haggerty; queer melancholy per Heather Love—but how could Reiki even begin to explain Faustite to his thesis committee?
How, once Reiki found the words (or at least words that would do some kind of job well enough for him to trust them), could he get through that explanation without someone going to any of his family who also had positions at DCU—both parents, his godfather, both grandparents who actually loved him, and one of his aunts—then telling them how they probably needed to nudge him about getting help on a more intense sort of basis than Reiki already did?
As far as Reiki could see—right here, right now, at some ungodly hour of Christmas Eve Night, sitting at his backstage work-station with an intent to fix his eye makeup so it would look nicer with his Elsa wig—there existed no such means of explaining himself and his true artistic vision (such as it was) in such open, honest terms. Glancing down the work-table, toward some vintage crystal statue whose origins he didn’t rightly know (he’d heard too many stories to judge the real from the fake), Reiki felt his heart sinking. He was going to have to either leave so many weeks of work out of his autoethnography entirely, or else outright lie to his thesis committee. Stretching the truth might have worked in some cases, but all the ways coming to mind for how to explain Faustite……fell so hopelessly short of making sense—whether of him in general, how he challenged so many of the ideas that normal people took for granted, or why he merited, in Reiki’s mind, invocations of lines like “Explorers in the further regions of experience. Demons to some. Angels to others,” “It is not hands that call us; it is desire,” “No tears, please; it’s a waste of good suffering,” “What is it you pray for?… A joyful note? Without change, without end? Heaven? There’s no music in that,” and “‘Enough’ is a myth.”
The statue—a naked woman with a clock where her stomach should’ve been—didn’t have any answers for him. Nor did she know how to apply his makeup for him. She didn’t even have the decency to tell him what time it was; deprived of working batteries, she’d been frozen on 6:48 for a few years now and that wasn’t particularly relevant to Reiki at the moment.
Taking a deep breath, he turned back to the mirror. But as he daubed a brush in some of his light cyan eyeshadow—good match for all the stages of his costume for Disney-Elsa—Reiki heard Cherry call out to him, “Sayuri! You ready? Can we get you on deck?”
Almost as soon as Reiki looked her way, Cherry sighed, giving him a sympathetic frown.
“I—I mean, I can hurry up—I’m sorry, I got in my own head, I just—”
“No, no, fix your face, honey; it’ll be fine.” Scanning the rest of the room, Cherry directed her next summons to all of them: “Hey! Who’s ready to go on early?”
Fortunately, five different hands went up, and from what Reiki remembered of their numbers, any of them would fit into the show order just fine.
Bless holiday shows. Thank someone’s god for how easy it was to reorganize them on the fly and still have everything feel more or less cohesive.
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Posted: Sat Jun 10, 2023 6:10 pm
Quote: if you thought that i forgot about finishing this nonsense, you’d only be like 65% correct but in my defense, reiki has been having A Lot Of Feelings about other stuff that was more immediately pressing, also i had Le Writer’s Block about the low-key mid-2000’s songfic format that i decided to use for his drag numbers, whoops.
Onstage, Sibyl and Cherry bantered a bit, mostly vamping with each other as they often did, but a little bit for the sake of Sibyl double-checking that Sayuri was ready, that Matt and Katie had the right mix queued up, that everything was, indeed, good to go. Most of what they said, Reiki didn’t really process. Heard them, yes, and he tried to listen, but his brain didn’t want to make sense of the words. Putting everything they said together into an actual coherent understanding……felt like so much effort.
He understood the most important thing: Sibyl calling for her beloved drag nightmare, Sayuri, to get out here for her next number. Once the applause died down, the first tinkling, melancholy notes of “Let It Go” started up, and Reiki pushed himself into position.
As she had with her red dress from the Judy Garland tribute number, Sayuri had meticulously, painstakingly paid homage to the details in her recreation of Elsa’s gown. Lip-synching along to Idina Menzel—“The snow glows white on the mountain tonight, not a footprint to be seen. A kingdom of isolation, and it looks like I’m the queen”—she moved slowly, gave the stage lights time to glisten off the sequins and rhinestones Reiki had used to recreate the embroidered patterns on the green bodice.
“The wind is howling like this swirling storm inside. Couldn’t keep it in; Heaven knows I tried”—as Sayuri crossed downstage and closer to the center, Reiki hoped that someone in the audience appreciated the work he’d put into getting this wig just right. It was one thing to style a wig like Elsa’s pinned-up braid from the start of the song, or the loose braid she would sport by the end. Quite another, though, to get a wig that could make the transition from one style to the other.
(Never mind the work Reiki had put into securing the stupid thing over top of a second wig and his natural hair. Even with the latter pinned up in its own crown braid—one of the only reliable ways to make his hair take up as little space as possible—this whole arrangement had taken finagling to pull off without making the upcoming wig-reveal obvious. Yet, an unfortunate necessity: Reiki hadn’t been able to make the top wig transition from the loose braid into the unbraided locks Elsa would sport by the end of “Show Yourself,” so……needs must.)
“Don’t let them in, don’t let them see. Be the good girl, you always have to be! Conceal, don’t feel, don’t let them know!”—As with Disney-Elsa in her first movie, only one of Miss Sayuri’s hand wore a glove, while the other showed off Reiki’s black glitter nail polish. Normally, he might have bothered with press-on nails, but that would’ve made it more difficult for Sayuri to methodically work his fingers loose within the glove. Worse, it might’ve made her hands look unbalanced when—“Well, now they knoooooow!”
Sayuri tore off the remaining glove in a veritable explosion of glitter, the sort of way she never would have done when wearing her Elsa costumes to story-time hour at the Destiny City library. Not that Reiki really liked how hard glitter was to clean up, but practically every other performer tonight was leaving some kind of mess behind them. At least glitter would usually cooperate about getting sucked up a vacuum. Might not be so easy to get it off Junsei’s pants, when she tossed it to him and he caught it. But that was a problem for Future Reiki to apologize about.
“Let it go”—Releasing another packet of glitter from her right sleeve, Sayuri whipped to face one corner of the audience and let it fly.
“Let it go”—She repeated the process, going to the left this time (and tried not to get too distracted by the audience faces she could see, nor by how much delight you could infect a room full of queers with, only by using some strategic twirls and glitter).
“Can’t hold it back anymore”—Turning to the center of the crowd, Sayuri steadied herself. She wouldn’t have any more glitter up her sleeves after this, so she had to make this count.
“Let it go. Let it go. Turn away and slam the door”—Almost solemnly, she raised both arms, palms up, toward the ceiling. Then, whipped them apart. Threw them to the sides with a flourish. Sent glitter flying in both directions and trailing behind her as she next threw herself toward the audience.
“I don’t care what they’re going to say! Let the storm rage on……”—Spinning around the tables always proved more delicate than Reiki ever accounted for while choreographing his numbers. But at least he knew his way around, so Miss Sayuri could look purposeful about everything, even as she adapted on the fly to dance around chair-legs and purses and the sleeves of people’s coats.
“The cold never bothered me anyway!”—With a smirk, she shunted her cloak off her shoulders. Tossed it to her family’s table (where Mom helpfully caught it, rolling it up so Miss Sayuri wouldn’t slip on it later or anything so horrid). Blew a kiss as she took a tip from someone, then scampered off into the crowd.
“Let It Go” had such an air of reckless abandon, of triumph, of the play that Elsa’s parents and her grief over losing them had long denied her. Only fitting, then, that Miss Sayuri should keep that same spirit in mind as she moved around the crowd. No, her choreography did not perfectly match Disney-Elsa’s, the way that some queens would do with a similar performance……but Reiki had a budget for special effects to work within, which distinctly did not include enough money to pay someone—even one of his drag siblings—to practice following behind him and using spray bottles to mimic Disney-Elsa’s actual movements, or to pull his glove and cape away offstage on fishing wire.
Anyway, as long as you performed the number with feeling and heart, almost no one would play a stickler over it not being an exact recreation. (Good thing, too, or Reiki might have been expected to answer for why he already had his white, “Show Yourself” tights on, as if getting the rest of the costume to change wasn’t difficult enough without having to work out the impossible physics of making his tights change from dark green to white while onstage.)
“And one thought crystallizes like an icy blast!”—A moment to shove her tips at Mom (a lingering childhood sentiment, that feeling like “I can’t shove these at my brother, he might take some for himself, but obviously, I can trust my Mom”). Then, Sayuri darted back toward the stage.
“I’m never going back!”—She leapt up (not as impressive as it might’ve been with a taller platform, but at least significantly easier to manage in a gown), and landed at center stage (or close enough).
“The past is in the paaaaaaast!”—Mouth screwed up as if trying her best not to cry, Sayuri tore off the tiara perched atop her wig. Threw it over to Yuki like a frisbee. Good thing it had come from Claire’s. Better, yes, that Yuki caught it perfectly, but if it had gotten broken, that wouldn’t have proven a terrible loss.
“Let it go! Let it go! And I’ll rise like the break of dawn!”—Feeling her fantasy like a vintage Herbal Essences commercial, Sayuri unpinned the crown braid and braided bun at the nape of her neck. Thus liberated, her white-blonde braid tumbled down past her waist. For good measure, she mussed her fingers around in the wig’s bangs, letting them flop around her cheeks more freely.
“Let it go! Let it goooooo! That perfect girl is gone!”—Some necessary fussing ensued. Finagling with the snaps that would blossom apart, changing her black sleeves to a nude tone with icy blue sequins, revealing beneath her somewhat boxy green gown, a figure-hugging one in blue.
“Here I stand in the liiiiiiiiight of daaaaaay! Let the stoooorm rage on!”—A spin like Lynda Carter back when she played Wonder Woman, a tug in the right place on her shoulder, and Miss Sayuri perfectly pulled off her gown-reveal. Applause washed over her, though quickly fell silent so they could hear Idina belt her heart out.
Chin held high like every haughty anime girl he’d ever looked up to as a kid, because she might’ve been a b***h but gods, she was ******** fierce, Miss Sayuri perfectly mouthed along with the final declaration, “The cold never bothered me anyway.”
Which could have been a perfect place to stop.
Had she been doing this for the talent portion at a pageant, yes, Sayuri would have stopped there (and Reiki would have taken more time to choreograph specific movements, rather than having a vague idea of the shape of the number, but mostly, trying to embody the song and letting the spirit of it carry her however it moved).
But tonight, underneath the applause over that “Let It Go,” the strains of something else started.… Darker chords, and more ominous, matched by the dawning look of panic on Miss Sayuri’s face as she hugged herself and started pacing the stage. When Idina Menzel’s Elsa spoke up, harshly recriminating herself—“Get it together! Control it! Don’t feel! Don’t feel! Don’t feel! *Don’t!* *FEEL!*”—Miss Sayuri hit every word. Increasingly frantic, she ended with both hands knotted in her wig’s bangs, wide-eyed and on the verge of tears.
Then, the movie’s background score melted into something else, a tinkling, melancholy piano line……
“It’s finally come, come to knock down my door”—The voice, this time, came not from Idina Menzel, but Caissie Levy, the original Broadway cast’s Elsa. Staring ahead, not at anything in particular but into nothingness, Miss Sayuri slowly disentangled her fingers from her wig. Had to keep all his motions deliberate for this part of the number. Had to work the mood just right, embody the song, and make everyone feel the pain that Disney-Elsa felt at this moment. (They wouldn’t be the only ones he’d shoved into certain unwanted pain lately, would they?)
“I can’t hide this time like I hid before”—Shaking her head, letting her braid toss and turn around her waist, Sayuri let a haunted look descend on her face. (Silently thanking his emotions for their incredibly unrequested input, Reiki tried to shunt any thoughts of Faustite back into a corner so he could deal with them later. Mindfulness practice, or something like that. The emotions themselves had every right to exist, but on stage right now provided them neither the time nor the place to do so.)
“The storm is awake, the danger is real. My time’s running out!”—Although she got her hands close enough to her face, close enough to mime dragging her fingertips down her cheeks in anguish, she dared not actually touch her own skin. As much as Reiki focused his ire on the color white specifically, because white was the worst offender about this, other light colors could get equally messed up by misplaced streaks of foundation. Best to leave it alone. (Just like the memory of Faustite, on the roof with Tama, breath hitching and expression illegible, immediately before he ran off in a burst of flame. Because of Reiki, and because of his magic.)
“Don’t feel, don’t feel……”—A whip of her head away from the audience. Snap of her hands down, in a dismissive gesture. Briefly forgetting his gloss, Reiki let his teeth graze Sayuri’s lower lip. (It had been self-defense with Faustite. Defense of Tama, as well. Justified use of force, even with the knowledge that Faustite’s youma half made him more vulnerable to magic. Magical girls helped people. Protected the innocent. Stood up for those who could not protect themselves. So, hadn’t that use of force been justified, then……)
“‘Fear will be your enemy, and death its consequence.’ That’s what they once said to me, and it’s starting to make sense……”—Although Sayuri lifted her head with elegant grace, Reiki himself felt anything but graceful or elegant. The dawning recognition etched across her face felt far too close to his own experiences of late……far too close to realizing what he’d done to Fang, to Kerberos, to Faustite, and the cold, heavy sense of doom that had loomed over him for ages because of it. (It wasn’t working, all this telling himself to shove those feelings aside. Requesting for them to be quiet and wait their turn. Per Saint Freddie of West Kensington, “The show must go on”—and this was hardly the first time Reiki had gotten on a stage and performed while sitting on top of a hurricane and telling himself that everything was fine.)
“All this pain, all this fear began because of me. Is the thing they see, the thing I have to be?”—As Sayuri paced the little elevated area that Scandals used for its stage, Reiki felt his hands trembling. You weren’t supposed to do that onstage. You really weren’t. He’d learned that all the way back in kiddie community theater productions that he’d gotten to take part in, in the days before he’d started hearing endless refrains of That was a great read for Glinda, but could we hear a little of your Elphie instead? and Yeah, you really brought that earnestness that Sandy needs, but I really wanna hear how you do with Rizzo.
One of the most tried and true rules of any stage performance: you always wanted to live in the moment, and anything you felt that did not fit with your character’s current state of mind? It did not exist until after you were done.
Trembling hands like this? Something that so unquestionably came from Reiki instead of Queen Elsa? Bad. Bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad. Even though no one seemed to notice, Reiki knew. He knew that Miss Sayuri’s hands shook not from a deliberate attempt to inhabit Disney-Elsa’s emotional space and embody it for the audience, but rather from his own bad nerves, his own refusal to leave his own head not even for a night, his own inability to smother feelings that he had neatly shoved into a box before, so there existed no valid reason why he could not simply cram them back in there until after closing time and keep them from ******** up his performance.
“A monster, were they right? Has the dark in me finally come to light?”—Miss Sayuri whipped around, abruptly facing the other side of the stage, the other collection of audience members. Reaching for her face but not quite touching it, she stared at the wall as if horrified by her own reflection in a mirror that didn’t exist.
(The thought of any mirrors, however briefly it flickered into existence, made Reiki’s stomach lurch.)
“Am I a monster full of rage, nowhere to go but on a rampage?”—She whipped around again, this time storming to downstage center as the music grew darker and more dramatic.
“Or am I just a monster—” Miss Sayuri stopped abruptly, close enough for most of Reiki’s family to have reached out and grabbed at her arm. And it looked, she thought, like Yuki was going to……. “—in a cage?”
As the music picked up, darker still and filled with a chorus of men expressing how Elsa needed to end this winter! bring back summer!, Yuki did grab up Miss Sayuri’s hand. Only, however, so he could curl her fist around a five-dollar bill. Good thing he let go quickly, because the brief spell without music made the best time for Miss Sayuri to flit around among the audience for more tips.
“What do I do? No time for crying now. I’ve started a storm, gotta stop it somehow”—As the vocals resumed, Miss Sayuri remained among the crowd. Stopping here, locking eyes with one of the patrons there—few things were truly off-limits right now, and at that, only because they didn’t fit with how Reiki’s interpretation of Queen Elsa would behave right now.
“Do I keep on running? How far do I have to go? And will that take the storm away, or only make it grow?”—So close and personal with the audience members, Miss Sayuri let them see how tight she had this lip-synch down. How expertly she hit every word, every vocal run, every bit of emotionality that Caissie Levy put into the song.
“I’m making my world colder; how long can it survive? Is everyone in danger as long as I'm alive?”—Not that anyone had asked for tonight’s purposes, but the exactness of Miss Sayuri’s lip-sync had come not only from her status as her drag family’s Miss Mouth Almighty, but also from how she’d originally prepped this number to perform for the kids at various family-friendly events that the House of Disobedience-and-Poppins had booked.
Nobody in the universe would judge your performance of any songs from Frozen harder than small children with enough sugar in their bloodstreams to supply Willy Wonka’s factory for a solid fortnight.
“Was I a monster from the start?”—Judging from the Look she got from a pair of Scandals Regulars—a nice couple of butch lesbians, tonight clad in matching Christmas Sweaters—they thought the answer was “No.”
“How did I end up with this frozen heart?”—Picking out Yuki’s face again, fixating on that point of emotional stability and relative comfort, Reiki could have dropped character right here in the middle of the number and kissed him.
“Bringing destruction to the stage, caught in a war that I never meant to wage”—As much as he physically kept himself in the moment—for all he refused to let one of Miss Sayuri’s performances suffer all because of his stupid a*****e feelings—Reiki couldn’t help the pang of gratitude at seeing the concern etched out on Yuki’s face right now. Of course, the number got a bit Dark. at this point.…
“Do I kill the monster?”—Difficult to find other words as apt as “Dark.” for the turn in the song where the beloved Disney heroine contemplates suicide just inexplicitly enough for parents to take their kids to see the play.
Hands starting to tremble once more, Reiki turned back toward his family’s table.
“Father, you know what’s best for me”—Miss Sayuri locked gazes with Dr. Hikaru Rokugin, clutching at the front of her gown.
“If I die, will they be free?”—Grip tightening on the fabric, Reiki tried his best to smother the wave of guilt that washed over him at the look on Dad’s face. This was just a number. Dad knew that it was just a number. With everything else he’d ever seen Reiki do on stage before, he couldn’t have let any doubts creep into his head about the fact that this was only a number and not indicative of anything real or concerning going on for Reiki?
“Mother, what if after I’m gone…”—Except……oh. Mom had a similar look of concern on her face.
“…the cold gets colder and the storm rages on?”—And now that he noticed, Reiki’s eyes had started stinging. Still, Miss Sayuri rushed back to the stage as if possessed by the storm itself.
“If I’m a monster, then it’s true”—She threw her arms up with the swelling music.
“There’s only one thing that’s left for me to do”—Steeling himself, Reiki fought desperately to keep Miss Sayuri’s face from betraying his own emotions. Conceal, don’t feel, he told himself. At least, don’t feel anything that doesn’t align with *THIS* Elsa. Stay grounded in the song.
Ugh, so much easier said than done.
“But before I fade to white”—At least, Reiki thought, his own emotions were similarly turbulent, similarly messy, similarly ******** up.
“I’ll do all that I can to make things right”—Maybe not in the exact same way as Queen Elsa of Arendelle’s, but how could anybody expect a one-to-one copy here? How could you expect that out of anybody? As Miss Sayuri pulled herself upright, as she set her face into a stiff upper lip expression—one frozen over with a refusal to let anyone see her cry, regardless of how obviously she wished to do so—Reiki felt the spirit of the next lines vibrating in his bones.
“I cannot be a monster”—No matter what side he’d Awakened to in the magical girl gang war that had been simmering beneath the surface of reality for longer than he knew.
“I will not be a monster”—No matter that his Starseed had something fractured about it (not literally, he hoped, but metaphorical fractures were bad enough)……something about him was darkened and tainted by the force of Chaos (perhaps irreparably, perhaps not)……but that didn’t define Reiki, did it?
His gutter soul didn’t change his desire to help people.
His broken starseed didn’t change how fiercely he loved, or how deeply he believed in fighting for the good things in this universe, or how much he burned, pined, and perished to help people and be a force of kindness in the world.
“Not tonight!”—But what if he was wrong, the way he’d been wrong about so many things lately?
As the music swelled to its finish, Reiki shoved that thought to the back of his mind. Or anyway, he tried to.
The applause came on fast, but he wasn’t finished. And if he wanted to get through “Show Yourself,” Reiki couldn’t let himself get bogged down in that anxiety, that negativity. He could feel his feelings <******** later. For right now, until he got through the final phase of this number, Reiki had to focus on the songs, on the music, on baring everything because that vulnerability was power for any performance artist.
The show must go on.Quote: anyway, pride month means there are more scandals songfic solos forthcoming after i get to the actual point i had in mind for all of this, ahahahaha, why did i decide on this formatting for reiki’s numbers, ahahahaha, fake laugh hiding real pain, etc.
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