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

[exequy]

“That I didn’t rephrase,” Kostos asks—and if the initial offer to duck out of the lesson was 80% sincere, the offer to rephrase 60%, this question reaches a low of 40% or so, as low as he’s willing to go—“or that I didn’t suggest it at all?”

That he tugs her in closer is, genuinely, due to the fact that another overly-foot-focused couple orbits close enough to threaten collision.

[heirring]

That she allows herself to be tugged closer without elbowing him in the gut is because she is likable and kind and has not because she's slightly off balance between the effort of keeping time, in step, and the vibrant red flush of outrage from creeping all the way up the back of her neck and into her tips of her ears. The moment she has leverage (blessedly out of trampling range from the aforementioned partnership), Wysteria straightens her arms and locks the joint of her elbow to jam distance back between them.

"The second one. And I would encourage you not to make such a-- such an overture again."

[exequy]

He twitches his eyebrows upwards in an assenting way—a way that means yes, fine, and also means he hardly cares, except for the fact that the long minutes of this stupid dance lesson still stretching out into the future are now going to be that much more intolerably dull, with scattered moments of nauseating irritation when he glimpses Nell's red hair across the floor and nothing else at all.

The counting continues. One of the Orlesians demonstrates a skip step, and Kostos manages to do it while looking like he would rather fall on a sword, and then he says, "What was your name, again?"

(He remembers her name.)

[heirring]

"Wyster-- Miss Poppell." A hasty correction made between one hopping step and another. Of all the people to be on a first name basis with. She veers almost as quickly off from that topic and she does out of the path of an oncoming couple:

"You must be the younger one. Of the pair. Am I right?"

[exequy]

His face darkens as fast as a candle blown out. The dance nearly comes to a halt, evidenced by the first stutter of his feet while he wobbles on the verge of making a scene.

It isn’t the commentary—accusation—about their birth order. Not entirely. A month ago that would have been irritating the way everything else is irritating and no more. But since then they’ve nearly killed one another in the garden, and all of that, and they aren’t a pair. Kostos hardly knows him. Now he doesn’t want to.

None of that is Miss Poppell’s business.

And he doesn’t make a scene. He swerves back in time to smile, in a tightlipped and humorless way. He’s never been good at not drawing people a helpful road map to his buttons. For example:

“Why? Because he’s taller?” By the worst two inches in all of Thedas. But he does look a little more pleased about the second option. “Or is it the degeneracy?”

[heirring]

See, give her a few turns about the floor and she's perfectly capable of finding her footing. To say that she brightens in the face of his grim smile wouldn't be completely accurate, but--

Well.

She smiles in return. "Is he taller? I don't know that I've ever seen you both stand next to one another to compare."