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

[tender]

"Are you telling me you do like etiquette lessons?" She counters, eyes on that jug of wine.

Truthfully, once freed from the table Derrica hasn't found the dancing to be the worst way to spend an evening. It's difficult for her because she's in a room full of strangers and she's dressed poorly and she doesn't quite understand why this is all required of her. She's having some difficulty with all of it. It's hard to come all this way to join the Inquisition, only to find the Inquisition has up and split itself once more. Has she made the right choice staying here instead of moving onward to Skyhold?

She'd liked the idea of being so close to the sea. Enough to linger, anyway.

"Are you going to drink that jug all by yourself?" She tacks on, partly out of concern and partly out of curiosity.

[inkindled]

"'Course I do. Don't I look it?"

He grins at her. Clearly he's reveling in how very much he does not look like the etiquette lesson type, finally having come through the mire of feeling outclassed and inadequate and stupid and found his footing on the promised shores of deliberate peasant confidence.

"All the etiquette greats drink wine straight from the jug, y'know. S' a known fact." With great familiarity and generosity, he holds it out to her. "D'you want some? 'Cos sharing and being open-handed, that's not precisely etiquette, but I'm willing to bend those rules a bit."

[tender]

Rather than try to parse out exactly what Matthias looks like (a walking reminder, is what) Derrica just smiles. Resists the urge to pat his cheek. Holds her hand out for the jug instead.

"It's polite where I'm from."

Conveniently, she's late of a sailing ship with mostly disreputable history. It turns out packs of pirates aren't entirely concerned with manners.

"But I'll be sure to remember how gracious you've been when I come into some wine of my own. Perhaps we can be very polite and you'll let me return your generosity?"

Though really, Derrica has some terrible urge to split the jug with him to keep him from drinking it all himself.

[inkindled]

"Sounds very fair and polite to me."

He gives the jug over easily, with a little uptick of his grin. Sharing wine is a good way to make friends and Matthias always, always wants to make friends. He can't help it. One off his biggest weaknesses.

Without the wine, he's got nothing to do with his hands. Hooks his thumbs into his belt, out of sheer need to be occupied, and rocks on his heels.

"Where's it you're from, anyways? Not the Free Marches. I know it 'cause we don't believe in that tosh."

[tender]

"You don't believe in politeness in the Free Marches?"

Mostly to give him a bit of a hard time; Derrica's sure there's some fashion of etiquette in the Free Marches, even if none of the Marchers she'd ever sailed with had let on. Hefting the jug in her hands, she considers whether or not swilling from it will land her with wine drenched down her front or not.

Wisdom says get a cup, so she turns towards the table with one eye kept on Matthias.

"I've been sailing for so long I don't think where I came from really matters anymore."

Except it does. It always does. Derrica carries Dairsmuid with her wherever she goes.

"Can I tell you I was a pirate without it scandalizing you?"

Was, still is. Who's to say? She's here now, so maybe pirate isn't so applicable anymore.

[inkindled]

He's very convincing and earnest in the way he shakes his head, first. No manners. No belief at all. Isn't it scandalizing, and so on.

But that earnestness evaporates as she makes her confession, and Matthias instead stares around at her. It would be more normal--just a stare, someone waiting for the other half of that tale--only he's got these great shining eyes, and his mouth has dropped open a little, and he probably looks like an idiot hayseed child, which he would hate, but he's hardly aware of it in the moment, because: a pirate. Like a real pirate.

"You're having me on," he decides, eventually. Trying to be wary. Hoping he's wrong. Hoping she is an actual pirate. "As in, an actual-- Maker's balls, what're you doing here, then, if that's what you came from? That's loads better'n-- I mean, s' more brilliant, at least--"

[tender]

There's a moment of hesitation. Should she be admitting that? It hadn't ever mattered before, but Derrica hadn't exactly stayed anywhere long enough for it to matter. Would it matter here? Would people trust her if they knew she'd been happily participating in high seas robbery for years before she landed here?

Looking at him hurts her heart a little. He's so sweetly eager. There had been so many like him at Dairsmuid, before—

"I wanted to help," she says finally, a little softer, choosing not to confirm or deny her earlier claims. "I thought I'd come here and find the Inquisition, but it seems like Riftwatch will do just as well."

Admittedly, Derrica's still a little baffled about what Riftwatch actually is.

"For a long time it seemed like I could just ignore what was happening, but you can't hide forever, I suppose. You have to fight for what's right, in the end."

Even if you were terrified of what being on dry land, in one spot, very close to templars, would turn out to be like.

[inkindled]

Nodding, Matthias voices his emphatic agreement: "Yeah--I think loads of people felt that way. Like they could wait it out. S'ppose you used to be able to, if the problem was small enough. But you can't wait out anything like this. Not really. Not with bloody great rifts in the sky, spitting demons everywhere--not when what happens with Corypheus is going to blacken anything around it if something's not done about it. Like the Circles, sort of. No one can play neutral. You've got to do."

He follows that little speech up by reaching for the wine again, so he can get another gulp of it--and then a second, straight away. Emboldened as much by the drink as by his own declaration and her apparent agreement, Matthias goes on. With perhaps more gushing than he ought to cop to, if he wants to be thought of as cool. Can't help it, not in the moment, because--

"Can't believe even pirates feel that way, though. 'Cause you're, you know. Out there. Doing whatever you like. Maker's balls--never thought I'd meet a pirate."

And an altruistic one as well. Like something out of a folk story. All right, perhaps he's had a bit too much wine--blessedly not enough to get him to articulate any of that aloud, so he's got that going for him--but still.

[tender]

In spite of herself, Derrica can feel herself flushing. It's a lot of praise. Or admiration. It's delivered warmly enough that she doesn't quite know how to take it in stride. Is this worthy of praise? The war had simply become urgent to the point where she couldn't turn her face from it anymore.

(It had taken her so long to screw up the courage to set foot on dry land. Is that worthy of praise? All those years of cowardice?)

"Some of us have different ideas about helping than others."

A nice way of saying some of her crew still didn't care and others thought it was ideal to turn a profit in. Surely Matthias doesn't need to know about this.

"Were you at a Circle when all this started?"

[inkindled]

Matthias--flush-faced from wine and dancing and talking a great deal, and also possessing a certain amount of boyish blindness when it comes to subtle facial expressions or even colors--just nods again.

"S' true," he says, philosophically, and goes for another big gulp of wine. He grins when he goes to hand the jug back to her, with his teeth tinted purple. "Which all this d'you mean? Not Riftwatch, surely. When I first got here, they were still with the Inquisition. Or, well. We were. It was after the Battle of Ghislain. I was definitely not at any bloody Circle before that. I was in the field," which he says with a great deal of pride, shoulders pushed back a little. "Part of the war with the mages and the templars. Last time I was in a Circle we broke down the curtain wall and fucked off. S' not as good as being a pirate, mind. But it's not bad."

It might sound like bragging. Only Matthias delivers it all so matter-of-fact that it has to be true--and, what's more, a truth he's proud of. And why not?