open | your baddest behavior

[cozen]

WHO: Alexandrie, Bastien, Byerly, and their captive audience
WHAT: Mandatory etiquette and dance lessons
WHEN: Justinian 15, 9:45
WHERE: The Gallows
NOTES: See the OOC post and IC announcement for more information! If you didn't sign up, you can still participate in Parts A and D, and just handwave the other two, without needing to sign up or get an assignment. If you want to do B and C, you can find your own dance partner/seating group OOC, or you can sign up now and we'll dole out new assignments if we get enough latecomers to do so. If you signed up and are missing from the lists when you shouldn't be, I'm sorry and please tell me!

disclaimer: event less fancy than pictured

Seating Assignments
— Table One: Gwenaëlle, Iorveth, Matthias, Athessa
— Table Two: Flint, Ilias, Darras, Med Seller, Yngvi
— Table Three: Julius, Thranduil, Anders, Brienne
— Table Four: Benedict, Colin, Valentine, Six, Derrica
— Table Five: Teren, Salvio, Bartimaeus, Osana
— Table Six: Freddie, Petrana, Kain, Merrill, Silver
— Table Seven: Yseult, Cosima, Steve, Inessa
— Table Eight: Sidony, Fifi, Nell, Fingon
— Table Nine: Thor, Nathaniel H., Solas, Skadi

Dance Partners
— Cosima & Nathaniel H.
— Athessa & Anders
— Teren & Flint
— Freddie & Bartimaeus
— Yseult & Darras
— Nell & Julius
— Merrill & Colin
— Skadi & Benedict
— Gwenaëlle & Solas
— Petrana & Salvio
— Osana & the Medicine Seller
— Sidony & Matthias
— Six & Thranduil
— Brienne & Valentine
— Fifi & Steve
— Thor & Fingon
— Ilias & Iorveth

Comments

Athessa | Open and Shut

[sulahnan]

Dance Break: Closed to Matthias

"MATTY! Athessa says the boy's name almost as loudly as she drums her hands on the table where her friend is seated, lurching forward and nearly careening into him, face first. With the formality of the function effectively gone, Athessa has seen to getting thoroughly soused.

Will she regret it later? Sure. Will that stop her now? Fuck no.

"Maaatttyyyy," she intones again, this time with her inside-voice and leaning against the table. "Dance with me, you grumpy nugget!"

Drink Break: OTA

Athessa stays in her borrowed fancy gown for about an hour after the end of the lesson, drinking enough to cut through her discomfort at being in something so...rich, and enough to be quite outgoing. Most of the attendees who walk past her at this point will be reached for, asked "Shall we dance?" in a very poor approximation of an Orlesian accent, and/or subjected to the elf's silliest notion of small talk. "Did you hear that Fontleroy's llama has written a book? I hear it's the talk of the season! And so insightful!" "Dreadful weather we're having, don't you think? I say we all buy summer homes in the Western Approach. Prime real estate, ripe for the plucking!" "Did you try the snails? Delightful!"

Later in the evening, however, after what any rational person would consider too many drinks, Gwenaëlle's loaner dress is draped carefully over the seat Athessa had occupied at dinner, while the elf herself has somehow managed to pilfer far more comfortable and much less classy attire from...well, it's not quite clear where. She has a too-big men's tunic cinched at the waist with a sash from somewhere else, some leggings that fit suspiciously well, and a scarf tied around her head.

Clearly, she needed the outfit change to pull some ambitiously acrobatic dance moves.

[inkindled]

"I'm not," Matthias starts to protest, then realizes that protesting makes him sound grumpy, thus proving Athessa's claim. He hastily reverses his complaint: "Not as drunk as you are. Maker. Let me catch up a little first."

It's true, he's not, and he would probably feel better if he were. He grabs for a nearby cup of wine--doesn't matter whose it was, it's his now--and quaffs it. Not exactly quaffable, really; the sour tang of it hits the back of his throat and he nearly gags. Manages not to. Quaffs another mouthful, with the hardiness of youth, the stamina of someone not quite keen but determined to learn to be keen, because everyone around him is keen.

A little wine dribbles down his chin, and Matthias wipes it away with the back of his wrist.

"If I tread on your dress, are you going to punch me?"

[sulahnan]

She turns so she's looking at him sort of over her shoulder, practically sitting on the table. Aiming for silly and, paradoxically, landing on coy.

"On my dress? Nah--" She waves a dismissive hand at the notion, but then gestures down at herself. "On this, the dress that Gwen let me borrow? Yes. I'll have to."

The shrug that lifts her shoulders is so exaggerated that it's as if she were being puppeted by invisible strings. Its momentum carries her a step away from the table and she turns, reaching for Matthias' hands to pull him bodily out of his seat.

"So mind your feet, ser."

[inkindled]

Gwen. Gigi. Matthias just starts to look around for Gwenaëlle, maybe so he can call out to her--oi, d'you condone me getting punched over your dress--but then Athessa hauls him out of his chair, displacing Matthias' stomach for a moment. Partly because he's pulled so forcibly, and partially because she's grabbed hold of his hand, and she's pulling him toward where there are other people dancing.

Maker's balls, Matthias thinks. But he lets it happen. What else is he going to do?

"Right, but I'm shit at dancing," he tells her, over the sound of the music, "like, actual shit--and you can't punch me too hard, I didn't have all the proper nutrients in the Circle and all--grew up eating sawdust when times were hard, before that--"

Exaggerated. At least the dancing looks more his style now, cheerful chaos.

[sulahnan]

"Sounds tasty. All I had was actual garbage," she says blithely. "And I'm good enough at dancing for the both of us, so I'll lead."

The stupid thing about these dances--at least one of the stupid things, anyway, is just how fuddy-duddy they are. Two steps forward, one step back, get in line, face each other, step forward, curtsey, step back, bow, blah blah blah.

Just about the only fun bits of these dances are the little hops and hooking arms and twirling around, which is all that this new dance Athessa makes up on the spot consists of, really. A lot of twirls, some hops, hooking arms a few times, hands on hands, hands on waist, hop hop twirl.

And stumbling, and laughing, of course. The concept is much neater than the drunken reality.

[inkindled]

There's no way that she ate actual garbage, Matthias thinks first. There would be other things to eat, right? Could even chuck a rock into a pot of boiling water if the rock were salty enough.

The consideration is abruptly disrupted when they're out among the dancers. Athessa is certainly leading, with her arm hooked through his--hop hop twirl, and Matthias is dragged along, risks falling on his face if he doesn't follow--and what's the point of not following, anyways. The wine is already going to his head, softening him, and her manic energy is doing the rest, sweeping him up and carrying him along with her.

One hop is actually one step--though there's no discernible order to the dance, too frenetic, too kinetic to be followed--and Matthias stumbles right into Athessa. She's shorter than he is, so it's an awkward jarring stumble, limbs jangled wrongways together--mildly painful, but more something to laugh at--

"Ow," he says, on cue, and laughs as he tries to disentangle from her. "What d'you call this dance, anyways--s' mental--"

[sulahnan]

She laughs with him and gets their limbs back in order, looking up at him through her eyelashes in between adjustments.

"Don't call it anything," she says, stepping forward almost as if to close the distance on purpose this time, but it skews diagonal and she hooks her right arm in his. "But I guess if it wasn't something I was just making up right now it'd be called Drunk Party Dance That's Actually Fun. Hmm, sounds worse out loud. I'll work on it."

[inkindled]

"Nah," Matthias says, grinning hugely, "I like it. Suits it perfectly."

He is managing to be both concerned with and fine with the closeness--but barely managing, like if you scraped him with a thumbnail all the top layer of perfectly fine would flake off and reveal how very not fine he might actually be. Except it's not like it's a bad very-not-fine. More the sort that is full of disbelief, the sort that would grab you by the arm and say, oi, can you believe this?, half hysterical.

He's managing to keep it together. Cool. He's cool. Athessa's arm is hooked through his and his side is pressed to her side and he, Matthias, is cool. They're doing a hop skip dance, and he's laughing, and he's cool.

What if he kisses her? Is that cool? No. But maybe. But no.

[sulahnan]

He doesn’t get a chance to, cool or not, as on the next complicated dance step Athessa trips on the hem of her dress and stumbles, laughing. She manages not to go tumbling in a tangle of cloth but her attempt to mask her ill-footing as another dance move just results in her steadying herself with a grip on the front of Matthias’ shirt.

“Okay, okay,” she says. “I gotta get out of this stupid dress.”

Pretending this is the official dance thread because yolo

[justice_is_blond]

"So we're assigned to dance together, what a burden." There's a smile on his face and in his voice as he joins Athessa and, after a glance at the lead pair, holds out a hand at the right angle. "I don't know how much fun a stuffy dance will be, but at least I don't have a stuffy partner for it."

He's in robes that look like peacock feathers, blue and green and gold, with actual peacock feathers on the shoulders and a gold earring in one ear. They're the robes he wore for his wedding two years ago and while they're a little snug, they're not too tight.

[sulahnan]

She grins at Anders, taking his hand as the dance demands. It's a simple combination of steps: step, together. Step, together. Step, step, step, together. Same format for a turn, and it repeats forward and back in very repetitive, boring fashion.

"We should make improvements," She says, adding a slight curtsy to one of her step-togethers. "Otherwise it'll be too stuffy."

Then, after looking at Anders' attire and her own: "We look like cake toppers."

More accurately, a meringue fluff and a peacock, but whatever.

[justice_is_blond]

Anders snorts at the observation, unable to help himself. That's probably points lost for him, but it's not like he'd been expecting a lot of points anyway.

"Fancy cake toppers. Should we twirl at the next turn? Start small, and continue to improve from there?" He's not being taken to any fancy parties. His past makes that certain. "Because you're right. This is dull."

[sulahnan]

"I usually prefer to go big, go fast, and go hard, but sure. We can start with a twirl. Wouldn't want to dazzle them until they've had more to drink."

She also won't be invited to any fancy parties, if not because of her ears, then because of her personality.

"We should add a hop, too."