EVENT: TRUTH BOMB

[faderifting]

WHO: Anyone
WHAT: TRUTH BOMB
WHEN: Bloomingtide 15-17
WHERE: The Gallows
NOTES: OOC information. Use appropriate content warnings in your subject lines, please.

It’s an ordinary day—so not a very pleasant one. The weather is dreary and muggy, and the day’s lunch is a soup that’s a little too watery and bland. The griffons are being their usual level of noisy and swoopy. The work is its usual level of urgent and difficult.

But in the storage rooms, something wiggles. Then it hums. Then it pops.

Outside of the storage room, there’s no actual sound, no shift in the wind, and no visible sign of a change. But the pop might be felt—like the moment something finally clicks, or two ideas suddenly fit together, except the opposite. In the heads of everyone in the fortress, something is suddenly not connected quite right.

The first sign of what’s gone wrong is that someone immediately stands up and tells the cook how bad the soup is.

A lot of people’s days are about to get exponentially worse.

Comments

[altusimperius]

Stung, Benedict watches him leave the basin, his eyes fixed firmly on Leander's face and no other part of him.

"What sort of fun would you expect me to have," he says bitterly, "with someone who appears just to insult me and leave again?"
After a moment's hesitation, he presses his hands behind him on the lip of the basin and pulls himself out, snatching a towel from nearby and wrapping it around his waist-- there's a quick glimpse of the rest of him before he covers up, and he stands, running his fingers through his damp hair as he goes to a looking glass.

"I don't know who you think you are, that I'd be so lucky," he says primly, inspecting his own face, "as if I need your charity."

[sarcophage]

Leander whirls around, suddenly alive with delight, and holds there, clutching his towel in both hands. Thusly does he stare at Benedict for at least three entire seconds. This may be the most animated he's looked since he sailed out from Antiva City.

"Did you just openly admit to only being worthy of a pity fuck? I can't believe it. Tell me you didn't."

[altusimperius]

"What??"
Benedict turns back to meet his eyes incredulously. "I was being sarcastic," he snaps, "so I suppose you're as stupid as you are crazy."
Tossing his hair, he looks back at the mirror to continue primping.

[sarcophage]

It's too late; those common insults scatter like pebbles at his feet. He'll be snickering about this well after he leaves the baths, and grinning at least until then. Fortunately, the time of pants-wearing is not so far off, although he does seem to be taking his time.

"That you'd be so lucky, indeed." A pause, while he gives his hair a vigorous rubbing. "Oh, dear," still beneath the towel, "You've made my day, darling. You really have."

[altusimperius]

His aggravation growing, some part of Benedict is aware he's allowing himself to be riled up. He's been teased before, and derided for being Tevene, but never outright mocked in this way, and he quite simply doesn't know how to handle it: when his parents were always around to ensure the best possible treatment and utmost respect, he never had a reason to grow a thick skin.

Not to mention the strange compulsion to say what's on his mind making it a recipe for disaster.

"You can't talk to me that way," he says sulkily, the words escaping him before he can think about it.

[sarcophage]

"Can't I? Don't answer that."

Maker help him, if Benedict responds to that question literally, he might burst. As it occurs to him, the very real possibility of laughing aloud in public is at once distinctly unattractive—it's already feeling suspiciously like a case of the giggles, which is as ridiculous as it is difficult to escape once it starts—so he picks it up a bit. Soon he's hoisting his trousers, fastening the tie at his waist.

[altusimperius]

Pulling his attention from Leander long enough to shrug into a robe, Benedict casts the stinkeye over his shoulder again before going into his small basket of personal items and finding a pot of lotion, which he begins to massage painstakingly into his face.
"I won't," he sniffs, exuding such haughtiness that at least half of it has to be an intentional screen for how increasingly embarrassed he's becoming.
Pushing his hair back out of his face, he examines himself from several angles, as if to make sure the strain of being irritated hasn't caused any new wrinkles.

[sarcophage]

Perhaps he'll see Leander's back by way of reflection, with a heavier shirt thrown over his bathing cover, and the relative haste with which he gathers his things, snatching up his towel and squeezing the sponge once more over the basin. Reacting facially to the primping ritual taking place across the room. Either way, observed or otherwise, Lea will have made his exit by the time Benedict turns around.

And he'll be wearing a half-suppressed smile all the way up to his room.

[altusimperius]

He does notice, and despite all the airs he's putting on, the sight of Leander's departing smirk is like a lance through Benedict's confidence. He looks back at himself in the mirror, deflating slightly now that there's no audience, and sigh through his nose.

Well, at least beauty is permanent.