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[ota] nobody's gonna have an orgy in their mansion all over their nice furniture
WHO: OTA, more or less
WHAT: An all-hands infiltration mission ends up being rather more hands than anticipated.
WHEN: Nowish
WHERE: At an estate outside Ostwick
NOTES: Sending crystals are allowed but must be used with the utmost discretion to avoid discovery. A general warning for Eyes Wide Shut-type party nonsense, but more fancy swinger makeouts than sex dungeon. Please make sure to communicate OOCly to ensure everyone's having fun. NSFW content is likely, but if a thread is going to turn into prolonged porn please shift it to an inbox.
WHAT: An all-hands infiltration mission ends up being rather more hands than anticipated.
WHEN: Nowish
WHERE: At an estate outside Ostwick
NOTES: Sending crystals are allowed but must be used with the utmost discretion to avoid discovery. A general warning for Eyes Wide Shut-type party nonsense, but more fancy swinger makeouts than sex dungeon. Please make sure to communicate OOCly to ensure everyone's having fun. NSFW content is likely, but if a thread is going to turn into prolonged porn please shift it to an inbox.
Word has come through reliable sources that Baron Hounsford, secretly a significant financial supporter first of the Inquisition and now of Riftwatch as well, is to be the target of an assassnation attempt. Precisely why or by whom is unknown, just that the threat is imminent. Worse, the Baron has left behind his personal guard to attend a somewhat mysterious event at the home of Lord Esterhauzy, outside Ostwick. All Riftwatch has been able to learn on such short notice is that the estate is secluded and the event extravagant. The massive scale is a blessing and a curse: it's certainly big enough to sneak in quite a lot of people, so long as they look as if they have money, but by the same token it will be easy for assassins to sneak in as well, and difficult to quickly locate anyone.
On arrival, everyone willing to dress the part is ushered in to Lord Esterhauzy's glittering mansion, where the difficulties of the mission suddenly become much greater: each person, whether disguised as guest or staff, will be handed a random mask, and informed of the rules:
- 1. Masks must be worn at all times.
2. When the musicians play the famous Merry Widow of Wycome, every guest must kiss the person to whom they're speaking, or who is closest. They must continue until the music stops.
3. If they aren't interested in stopping, slipping away somewhere more private is an option (but given the competition for space, finding somewhere completely private may be a challenge.)
4. Any person found to be breaking these rules, or the spirit of them, will be unmasked, removed from the premises, and forbidden from attending in the future.
The dimly candle-lit ballroom is already loud with masked guests, so many that they spill out onto the torch-studded terraces and garden beyond. The room is overwarm, but not sweltering thanks to the efforts of oiled footmen posted near the windows with large fans, and the servants circulating with trays of icy-cold champagne. Somewhere in this crowd are Baron Hounsford and those who wish to kill him, and the only way to find them is to spread out, speak to as many people as possible, and regularly pool information among themselves to try to zero in on their targets. They must mingle as if lives depend upon it.
Those reluctant to participate if it might be avoided will discover that locations where private conversation can be had without complying with the house rules are almost non-existent. Lord Esterhauzy learned his lesson the last time he tried this--it is a common subject of gossip among the crowd that the last party he had advertised as the most debauched of the season fizzled out into merely a slightly racy cocktail hour with underdressed staff. This time he has taken precautions, blocking off most of the house, monitoring access to the rest to ensure it's for sexy purposes only, and empowering staff to have anyone not complying with the spirit of the event thrown out--lest they think that an idle threat, shortly after they arrive several people are unmasked and thrown out for not obeying the musical cue, much to the laughter of the crowd. Even the grounds are patrolled.
There are several spots they've overlooked: a linen closet, a stairwell alcove, a corner of the library, but Riftwatch aren't the only ones to have discovered this, and there is no guarantee any particular hiding spot will be available when the music stops.
As the night goes on and the crowd gets drunker, the tone gradually shifts from slightly giggly titillation to more serious debauchery (much to Lord Esterhauzy's delight. If at first you don't succeed!) but there remains a veneer of decorum that keeps it from sliding into obscenity: people may saunter off to the garden or a private room with someone else's spouse(s), but nobody is just openly fucking on the piano.
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"No one knows what we're looking for," Derrica complains softly. "The danger might have passed and we'd never realize."
A complaint she'd tiptoed around in some other conversations but voices in full to Leander as they disappear from sight of the mingling dancers.
"Can I have a sip of that?" she asks as he leans back against the wall.
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The glass sits on his hand, stem between his fingers and below; a graceful gesture. "Finish it, if you like. I've had enough for one evening." Once it's slipped from his grasp, he tugs at the buttons near his collar, pops a pair of them open, plucks at the fabric to move a little air in between the layers. "That'd be ideal, wouldn't it—the danger passing unnoticed. The baron survives and Esterhauzy finds success at last."
After fussing with the mask a moment, he slides it up to rest at an angle on his forehead. Technically he's still wearing it—and that's exactly what reads on the face beneath. That and the colour, and the bit of liner around his eyes, more obvious out of shadow (as if his lashes need the help).
"Let them all get on with their getting-on."
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"I'd hate to interrupt the party for them," Derrica says softly. "Even if I'm tired of having to kiss some of these people."
And she's aware enough to realize that some of their companions are reaching a real breaking point here. Something has to give in this situation. Her fingers settle on the third button of his shirt, hooking there as she looks into his face.
"You're flushed," she notes, teasing. "You're having a better time than me."
Maybe she'd be less tired of kissing if she'd had a little more to drink, but it's too late to amend that course of action now.
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"It's the drink." True. Partly. Also true: some people are wearing more colour than others, and champagne doesn't tend to go to one's lips. (He's had enough, but he's also planning a later caper, and while en route he will pluck one more drink from a passing tray on a whim.)
A finger winds loosely in a lock of her hair: an excuse to graze jawline, feather-light.
"Feeling competitive?"
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Competitive, bored. It comes to the same thing right now. She's been kissed more than half a dozen times, some good, some bad, and it's all come to nothing. For all the good her presence had done, she could have disappeared from the dance floor with a willing partner and missed nothing.
"Whose powder is this?" She asks, brushing the collar of his shirt. Her fingers skim Leander's collarbone. "One of those women with the swan masks?"
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It's been an unusual evening for him in that regard—and it's not the drink, but their familiarity, that lubricates his tongue for the passage of a few of those thoughts.
"You're still the only woman I've slept with. Did you know that?" Of course not. How could she? He goes on, acutely aware of the fingertips throwing sparks so close to his neck. "Tonight feels much the same to me as it did then—like we've drifted outside the flow of time. Like the world outside these walls can wait." His hand has begun to wander, and the other will soon join it. Both are gentle; neither are shy. "You're wearing a dress," a lilting murmur, playful, like he only just noticed. "Quite well, I might add."
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"I didn't know that," she confirms. It's hard to tell in the moment how she feels about that, whether the distinction matters. She holds some small part of him for herself, has all this time and hadn't realized. That third button comes loose under her fingers as his palms rustle the folds of her dress. "I didn't have a lot of reason to wear something so fine back then either."
The bracelets on her arm shift with a soft clink as her fingers trace a nonsense pattern over his sternum.
"I thought you were so beautiful when I first saw you." Her hand lifts, pushing the mask back and off, flouting the rules to see his face fully, curls and all. Has she told him that before? It costs nothing to repeat, nothing to divulge. What does it matter to impart thing to Leander, who knows her better than anyone else in this room?
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It's a compliment he could find almost anywhere, but far nicer to hear it from someone who's known him. Derrica may not know all of him (and may she never), but she's known more than many, and whether she knew it or not (she probably knew) she was there to ease him through some poignant internal wretchedness. And when she began to glow about—that young woman, what was her name—he encouraged her to pursue it.
Kindness for kindness. An even trade.
That, too, echoes back.
"I think you're beautiful now," he says, on his way—
To pause, to carefully nudge her mask up as well—mindful of her hair, always eager to tangle in something—and then to kiss. And shortly to hum a laugh against her mouth at the papery feathery scuffling on top of their heads, bumping together like stupid hats.
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The laughter is the same. She likes drawing that from him, even if it's incidental right now.
"I want—" She begins, then breaks off. It's almost call and response, but she finds herself at a momentary loss as to how to sum up her feelings in this moment. "I want to find somewhere for us to take these off."
Ostensibly the masks, but her other palm flattens against his skin, fingers nudged beneath the fabric of his tunic and thumb skirting his collarbone, insinuating something else.
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He turns a glance to the noise beyond their little alcove. The party's still bustling. There are plenty of agents still concerned with the intrigue of the moment. She's practically undressing him already. No one of consequence seems to be looking this way.
And there's something almost transgressive in it, just as there was back at Dairsmuid, like he's flouting his own sense of self. But more than the shape of her body, she's—her. Soft. Familiar. A comfort.
And she smells nice.
"All right," he breathes, "let's go. There ought to be a place." They'd better put their masks back down while in transit, although Derrica will have to deal with Leander's face as he noses in close for another kiss or four just to get in her way.
Eventually, though, they'll slip away together...
(And maybe it will inspire jealousy in someone else, for once.)