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

[filthydipper]

Thing is, right, that there are generally reasons Yngvi has avoided dancing. For one there was a point in his life where some of their tutors mandated in and a riot of young dwarves dancing when they've precious few ways to blow off steam turns out how you'd expect until it doesn't. Until it's yet another lesson and it's terrible and you're paired off with Jim who has a runny nose. Also dwarves are made for a certain sort of dancing which isn't what he's been watching from the sidelines.

Lastly Yngvi is - charitably - a short arse who finds himself at his lady's side, peers all the way up at her and cocks his head.

"You'll be done dancing I s'pect if you try dancing with me." He's trying his best to sound ruffled. In clothes from her. All scrubbed up by her man. Probably the way smaller Yngvi might because who asks any of them their opinions or listens to them that often when they aren't to their liking?

[elegiaque]

Given the present state of her, it's probably a matter of safety for the both of them that they don't attempt to dance; Gwenaëlle has thus far managed mostly by being led about by taller, steadier hands ready to catch her when her feet aren't where she expects them to be, and between her feet and her skirts, she might well take Yngvi out of the party in the least dignified fashion.

But with that prospect mercifully off the table, she's still delighted to see him; to catch his chin in one hand and turn him this way and that to inspect Guilfoyle's handiwork, beaming.

It's slightly obnoxious, but thoroughly affectionate.

“You're so handsome under all that rough, Yngvi,” she says, as pleased as if she's somehow responsible for his bone structure. “I should have you painted. I'll show my children one day, that's your uncle, he never looks like that ordinarily—”

[filthydipper]

That Yngvi does not jerk his chin out of her hand says more about his upbringing than either of them; you can go years without seeing a horse only to know how it is to have to stand there while someone checks your bite, so to speak. And it wouldn't be fair, not to Gwenaëlle who knows enough, knows something of it from the other side, to go snapping just because it's what he'd like to do.

(What you like, what you want, what you need, tonight is the sort of event where it's made patently clear how little any of those things matter.

This is probably why nobles have wine cellars. This was all easier when he did drink.)

"Handsome? Handsome?" He squawks, flaps hands clear of hitting her because he missed something clearly when he was-- away. Best to play offended. "Handsome's a word for the sort of Orlesian fops running the show here, I'm...I'm how do you say-- rugged. You've scoured the edges off, is what you've gone and done. Made me like them paintings people don't do up right sometimes y'know if they can't get the staff in or do it on the cheap. Which is what I deserve if you get me painted. Which you won't do."

Painted? Him? Sat still for so long with someone looking at him? Not even Yngvi who lived a life under Einar's scrutiny is good enough to keep the shudder at bay when he near crawls out his skin at the idea. Or maybe it's uncle Yngvi, maybe she'll be good enough not to ask, it's complicated enough when Thranduil at times seems more like Yngvi's abstract idea of fathers the way books make out about them.