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

Val + Brienne

[degenere]

"I," Val announces to the tall, tall woman, "abhor this sort of dance."

Still: he offers his hand to her with a smile somewhere between mischievous and charming. To the untrained eye, he would appear to be dressed in a highly Orlesian fashion: from his brocade tailcoat, close-cut and well tailored in the chest, with daggered lapels and tails and fine golden buttons, and its bolero trimming of iridescent fabrics and leathers that has been styled to look like green dragonscale--to his fine boots of green leather, over the knee and supple enough to permit movement--right up to the velvet hat, soft like a cream, with a bejeweled brooch and four blue-and-green feathers to top it all off.

Of course, it is really a very daring and fashion-forward outfit, in Orlais. One sported only by the young and the rebellious, uninterested in the traditional upholding of traditions. But Val does not expect anyone here to realize as much, except perhaps his fellow Orlesians--though, then again, they are all rather a shocking set, with perhaps just one of them donning a mask constantly--and besides, this woman is no Orlesian.

She is striking. That is for certain. And probably controversial, in some way. He must figure out how.

"If we vary from the prescribed steps, we might cause a scene."

Imagine.

[servility]

The dinner went well enough. It's as good a start as she could ask for, really, to this mandatory exercise in dignified self-flagellation. It emboldens her to approach the dance segment of the evening with something closer to acceptance than resignation, so when her name is drawn, she moves to greet the man with whom she's to dance.

And then he speaks, and it's utterly familiar - enough so that she's certain she's spoken to him somehow, during her scant few weeks here in Kirkwall - but she can't quite place it. Fortunately, it doesn't seem like he recognizes her from wherever it was that they met, so she's off the hook for now.

All of which leaves her nothing to do but take the offered hand and allow herself to be led onto the dance floor. They've not even begun to dance but already Brienne wishes she were allowed to wear a tunic and styled pants to the occasion. They would've been far more comfortable to dance in than the dress she's currently donning, a simple garment not unlike the one she wore to the late Joffrey Baratheon's wedding.

In the meantime, the supposed lesson is beginning, and it's immediately apparent that 'dancing' here is absolute nonsense. A fact that her partner seems to at least partially agree with. 'If we vary from the prescribed steps,' he's saying, 'we might cause a scene.' And despite herself, she lets out a poorly concealed snort of dry humor.

"Is that a warning, or a request?"

[degenere]

Val's smile widens. He does not have to try to be amusing, of course. He is amusing, effortlessly. But even effortlessness likes to be appreciated, and what surer sign of appreciation is there than an unwitting laugh?

"Ah," he says, and taps the side of his nose, conspiratorially, "that is for you to decide, I think. It might in fact be either. I myself enjoy a scene, a confusion to the standards that are expected. I would name it request. But if you are not the same as I? Then you would name it warning. So? What is it to be?"

His smile, still charming, unwavering. Her hand is grasped in his as he turns to arrange himself for this dance.

"Either way, you must follow me, for these steps. I am of course an expert. But before that, my second question, perhaps more simple: your name?"

[servility]

For Brienne's part, she seems wary but not unfriendly - the expression of a woman who has nothing against him personally but doesn't much trust charming men. But trust is hardly a crucial ingredient to formal dance, at least no more than it takes to follow the steps he leads.

And to make conversation, within reason. His question is certainly reasonable. "Brienne of Tarth," she offers, knowing full well that she's failed to answer the question before it. Perhaps she will once she's decided. In the meantime, she has every intention of getting a read on who this man is. Riftwatch, of course, but what division?

Unfortunately, that question comes in the form of, "Are you an expert in any more useful skills?"

At once she almost (but not quite) regrets it. She does, however, decide to be a bit more tactful with him from here on out, at least as long as they're required to dance.

[degenere]

Before he answers her question: with his free hand, Val snaps his fingers, and points at her. Aha.

He also stops leading her to the dance. He stops walking entirely. With their hands joined together, she is obligated, too, to stop. Then again, she might be able to drag him to the dance floor if she so choose. What a thrilling thought. Val finds that he almost hopes that she does just that.

"No stranger to senseless prejudice. Cannot define nemesis or university. Cannot confess a pool of experience that does not exist. Virginal, is what we might then say, like one who has sworn a vow of chastity--which, while it is not for me, is perfectly fine, my dearest Jeannot has sworn such a vow and gets along very well, or really, better than well, or else I might not consort with him.

"A joke," he adds, in case she is worried about dearest Jeannot. "I would love my darling Jeannot no matter what. But you are Brienne! I had thought, when I heard your name the first, that I had heard it wrong. Now that I have heard it over again, I know the truth of you. Val de Foncé, mademoiselle. Madam? Which would you prefer, do you think? You completed our survey, some time ago now. When the truth was fashionable among our ranks. You do so now remember, yes?"

[servility]

And all at once, they've stopped. By the man's first words - 'no stranger to senseless prejudice' - she thinks for a second that he might have caught onto her own, to her generalized (albeit well-founded) opinions on men such as him. In fact, she draws breath for a carefully-worded protest of her own... But then he keeps speaking, and whatever she may have said goes utterly forgotten in the face of her blossoming realization and horror.

This is him. The man she couldn't seem to help but tell the truth, every truth imaginable with very little persuasion on his part. And with each word he says, she wishes more fervently that he might just stop talking, but (as with any other similarly horrifying incident) not an ounce of it leaks through the deliberate, utterly careful neutrality on her face.

"Yes," she finally speaks, a reply to the very last of his questions, then she loops back around to, "Just 'Brienne' is fine."

[degenere]

"Then I shall just be 'Val'," he says, with broad and sweeping confidence. Which is good, because that's what he introduced himself as. "There is much more to it, but I prefer the simplicity and familiarity of this way. What fortune, that we should have been partnered together for this exercise."

Pleased, he raises their clasped hands, as if to remind her of what has brought them together on this occasion.

The tapping of the staff is more insistent now, or else the rest of the room has quieted enough to bring out the sound. Val tugs her on, moving them through the crowd and this conversation.

"You did not say. Do you prefer to cause a scene, Brienne? You might think of this as a survey question, if that should bring you more comfort."

[servility]

Brienne follows him through the crowd easily enough, if only to get through this ordeal as painlessly as possible. She doesn't consider them nearly as 'fortunate' in this as he seems to, sorry to say, but she also knows how to play nicely with harmlessly irritating individuals in her time amongst the lords and ladies of Tarth.

"It depends, I suppose, on the reasoning." They're arriving at a mildly less crowded section of floor, so Brienne steps around in front of him now (it seems as though they're in a face-to-face part of the dance rather than a prancy side-by-side part, mercy of mercies), her hand still in his. "Do I like to cause senseless trouble? Hardly." But there are plenty of perfectly good reasons to make a scene. But the staff gives a particularly grating tap! on the floor and her brow flickers into a scowl. Low and dry, she adds, "If they keep us at this for too long, I can't promise I won't change my mind."

[degenere]

"Oh, I think it could go on for hours."

The steps to this part of the dance are good and simple--one hand at the waist, the others clasped, toe to instep--then step out, and repeat. The tapping of the staff keeps them on rhythm, methodical movement, and Val is smiling all the while, unworried about the fate that might lay before them.

"But if we were to break from what has been prescribed, it may end the trial all the sooner. I have found that is often the way of it. If you want an end to come, you find the best method to hurry it along, which is, regrettably, often chaos."

Regret does not at all factor into it. If Val seems delighted at the prospect, it is because he is.

"I have spent all my life finding small chaoses to disrupt the ordinary. It is satisfying. If you have never indulged, I recommend it most highly."

[servility]

The steps are simple, to the point where they quickly begin to bore her. She's hardly graceful (especially outside of combat) and while Brienne is far from embarrassing herself, her movements are a bit too stiff and precise to lend any real hope of dancing prowess underneath the instructed choreography.

And though she's certainly not intolerably bored, his suggestion - to end the trial sooner by way of breaking from the norm - comes at precisely the right time to actually (miracle of miracles) sound like a not-entirely-awful idea.

(Not to mention the distinct possibility that he'll leave her be if she plays into his game just enough to placate him, just this once. Jaime certainly used to.)

So when his recommendation comes, her hand drops to a bit more of a bracing position behind his shoulder rather than resting atop it. He isn't given much time to question the shift, as she lets the momentum of their next outward step help her tug him into something like a flourishing dip.

"Something like this?" Just barely on the cheeky sort of her usual deadpan, before she rights him on his feet again. Make no mistake, Brienne is entirely ready to get lectured for that. She's not even leading, this little stunt aside.