closed | all work and no play

[coquettish_trees]

WHO: Lady Alexandrie and her Lounge Brigade
WHAT: Irreverence and indolence for the sake of morale
WHEN: Now
WHERE: The Unofficial Tevinter Embassy (i.e. the Asgard estate in Hightown), and other places around Kirkwall
NOTES: Catch-all for closed starters; pm/plurk/discord/smoke signal me if you want to plan something. ♥

The undead walk the land, there's mountains of work to be done, ten tasks for every hand, so...

Champagne, anyone?

Comments

Gwenaëlle and Kitty

[coquettish_trees]

One day, Alexandrie decides two things suddenly: that simply enough had happened to Kitty in the preceding weeks and she ought to be given a chance to escape it for a little while, and that since she can’t remember exactly what the Provost’s wife sounds like when upbraiding her for something it had been far too long since she’d seen Gwenaëlle.

To this end, a messenger is dispatched with little invitations to come and stay over with her in the garden cottage, during which absolutely no work—or even the bare mention of it—is to occur. Lightly scented parchment and dark rose ink rather than simply sending a crystal message of course means the would-be hostess is in deathly earnest.

Be there at five, expect tiny food, if you haven’t got a dressing gown one will be provided for you. (Kitty.)

The cottage itself is a charming affair at the end of the estate gardens, and Alexandrie is already in partial lounge upon their arrival, waist-length copper curls hanging loose over the thick fabric of her robe, sitting beside a table containing a number of little sandwiches and a selection of the last fresh fruits of fall cunningly cut into flowery shapes.

“Ah, bon! Come and sit.”

[rathercommon]

Kitty, as ever, feels a little breathlessly gawky at all this finery. She wonders, at times, whether Lexie forgets exactly where she came from - that she's just a commoner from Balham, the daughter of a clerk and a washerwoman. Being from Earth and not Thedas, the signals are different, of course - the things that marked Kitty as a poor girl back there aren't identical to the things that mark the poor people here - but it's not like Kitty is subtle about talking about it, or that she hides it.

No, it's probably just that Lexie chooses to ignore it. Kitty...Well, she's still not wholly certain how she feels about that. It's nice, but it's strange, too.

She sits, gingerly, resembling nothing so much as a cat unwilling to fully plant its haunches on the ground. "Thanks for inviting us," she says, and tucks a strand of hair behind her ear. "I'd meant to bring some flowers, but the shops didn't have any." (An odd thing, one she isn't accustomed to - that here, in Thedas, there are things simply impossible to find at times of the year. Back home, the shops were stocked year-round with refrigerated greenery flown in from all corners of the globe, but here, everything is so seasonal.)

hi im bad and thought i'd tagged this already

[elegiaque]

As much as Gwenaëlle has, to some degree, streamlined her life in recent years—not so much that she doesn't have an assortment of dressing gowns to choose from and it isn't that difficult to arrange to be in Hightown at the right time. She visits her grandfather first—duly deferential—but presents herself and snakes a cushion to sit on, her hair hanging loose in its natural curl as she's rarely seen with.

“Nonsense,” she says, arch. “We're the flowers, just ask Lexie.”

*we’re* bad and thought that

[coquettish_trees]

“Just so,” Alexandrie replies as prompted, retrieving one of the cunningly carved flowery apples from its place among the others and making as if she means to tuck it into Kitty’s hair. She doesn’t, of course—although she’d not given her husband the same reprieve from sticky mess in the past—and instead leaves it in front of the young woman. “Besides, although I should have been most grateful for such thoughtfulness, flowers I have. It is your company I have lacked,” she reaches to pinch one of Gwenaëlle’s curls with cheeky affection. “The both of you.”

After a warm pause, to grant it the ring of truth rather than saccharine play-acting, Alexandrie fetches her own apple and begins to pluck its petals to nibble. “Now tell me something nice that I have missed. Or something irritating that we shall promptly gossip about.” She raises a finger in premature warning, her sternness patently feigned. “Nothing of real import.” The finger lowers, and she smiles. “Unless it is nice.”

Leander

[coquettish_trees]

It began as a review and vetting of all the reports and letters coming in from Nevarra that had been forwarded to her by the Scoutmaster. After the third interruption with additional papers by courier she’d thinned her lips in irritation, shut the portfolio of missives with a sharp decisive slap of leather against itself and declared loudly that they were going to her personal office in Hightown to finish the rest.

Somewhere along the way, according to stress-inspired whim, her ‘personal office’ turned into the lounging room littered with jewel-toned pillows piled over sumptuous Tevene carpets, the magelights made soft and diffuse by the silks draped and trailing artfully from the ceiling in front of them, and ‘finish the rest’ turned into the unceremonious thud of the offending portfolio onto the carpet and the uncoiling of the hoses of a Seraultine glass hookah.

And the restriction of her gown turned into a fluffy lounging robe, of which there was, of course, another, in case Leander wanted one.

Now, the filigreed gold end of a hose held delicately in one hand, the Lady Alexandrie exhales a thin stream of smoke at the letter held with equal aplomb in her other before raising her eyebrows and offering the paper to her companion to peruse.

“Did you know that in Nevarra it is entirely possible to continue to be perniciously unfaithful to ones spouse after one dies?”

:V

[sarcophage]

"Naturally," he says, through a plume creeping dragonlike from mouth and nose. "If one is lucky enough to be imbued with the right spirit." If only this case were so interesting as an incongruously horny wisp. "Incredible how he remained able to cast lusty glances without any eyes." A more purposeful breath likewise flutters the paper in his hand. Soon it joins its brethren on the floor, gliding across the pile until it loses that tiny cushion of air and comes to rest.

He declined the robe; while the lady may do as she likes, he remains her guest. More importantly, they will make a more romantic picture if he lounges fully clothed in contrast, all the more so with the halfway unbuttoning of his shirt. (She's already seen him. Pierced the flesh of his neck. She knows what his blood feels like, the warm metal scent of it.)

"That'll be me one day."

:V!!

[coquettish_trees]

“Imbued with the right spirit, casting eyeless lusty glances, or writing letters to complain of such things in another?” she inquires, idly following the path of the paper with her gaze before returning it to Leander by way of the again-healed line of scar peeking past the lazy fall of his shirt; the wound he wouldn’t let her sew.

For those who keep little sacred, the little is often strange. Or perhaps it’s not too strange to clutch some wounds like holy relics. The ones given, perhaps, by someone kept close enough to the heart to strike it.

(Near literally, it looks like.)

“All fine aspirations, of course.”

[sarcophage]

"The first two, of course. If I'm to be a mummy I must be well attended. Although, wouldn't it be lovely to send letters to people you know? From the crypt, by your own waxy, bony hand. Imagine the shock."

Let not thy sorrow die, though I am dead, and other gentle aspirations. That alone would be a good reason to keep friends.

The angle of her attention, meanwhile, does not go unnoticed, and his commentary comes in the form of a long look and a thin smile that lingers until he takes the hookah's nozzle gently between his teeth. His tongue comes forward to touch it. His eyebrow moves expectantly.

[coquettish_trees]

“It heals very well,” she remarks, finishing her unhurried inspection and returning her eyes to his, “for a wound that wanted stitches and had none.”

“Did you tend to it later, then?” With a loving care, perhaps, as one might polish a locket. Oil its hinges, run gentle fingers over its engravings, look upon what it contains—or not. Although the tone is conversational, beginning to become languid with what the smoke carries, Alexandrie makes little effort to hide the smaller signs of her curiosity. Leander will see them. Requite or ignore them as he likes.

[sarcophage]

As he likes.

The line down his chest has never wanted stitches, and even if it had, hers would not be the hand meant to tie them. All the same, his answer is a nod, the momentary lowering of his eyelids; they reopen heavy with contentment. (Could still snap keen in an instant.) He rests the hose on his flat belly, still clasping it lightly.

"You left it alone even after I'd fainted. I never thanked you for that."

[coquettish_trees]

“I am fonder of the meanings of things than I am of proper surgery,” she replies, lifting a shoulder. “You need not tell—” a breath to say something, then a brief snag in her speech, an equally brief flicker of her gaze upward in something approaching irritation, “—Madame Rutyer.”

Bastien and Fifi

[coquettish_trees]

Were it not for the Fereldan shopkeep’s daughter she’d posed as during the trial of Colin’s tormentor, the Lady Alexandrie would have had nothing to wear when Bastien came calling. The pitched idea was a bit bittersweet, given whose arm she was on the last time she’d been to a dance hall in the coarser sectors or society, but a rowdier night out than her usual fare had been irresistible when contrasted with the dry stack of correspondence she’d been translating and so here she is, coming down the grand staircase less grandly than usual to meet him: fresh faced save for a little lip color that obviously doubled as her rouge in a Fereldan-style dress of second-best cotton and a pair of Geneviéve’s old boots with her hair ironed flat and pulled over her shoulder in a simple braid, her only adornment a satiny blue ribbon with slightly beleaguered ends that holds the plait together in its bow.

Lucky that it was simple enough to do herself. After the ordeal with the hair she’d released Fifi to go and make her own preparations with the additional strident insistence that tonight she think of herself entirely as a friend. After all, what would be a trip to a such a hall be without the elven dancer fully let loose upon it?

“A woman on each arm, Bastien!” she dimples as she descends, her accent markedly changed to more closely match her dress, “We will wear out your shoes.”

[cozen]

"You will be doing me a favor," Bastien says up to her, pivoting onto his toes and turning his heels out to display the shoes in question, which—are fine. Old, is all. They've seen several cobblers in their time, and he would not wear them anywhere he expected to be held to any sort of fashion standard. But they're sturdy, they're comfortable, they're good for dancing and for running, and even when he was hiding enough money under the floor of his shabby Val Royeaux apartment to buy the building, or maybe the entire block, he never managed to shake some hardscrabble sensibilities. That's why the money was under the floor.

He looks out of place, maybe, in her elegant foyer, but so does she. Especially with that accent. Funny, really, how the way someone sounds can make their face seem different.

"But I think my legs will go before my shoes," Bastien adds, feet flattening. "I hope you and Fifi together are strong enough to carry me."

[untiltheyarent]

Fifi appears in the doorway of the kitchen a few moments later, having come up from her new quarters in the servants' wing. She's wearing her ruffled green dress, the same as she donned for the mandatory manners party, her hair bunched in tight sausage curls and held back out of her face by a ribbon of the same shade as the dress. Eyes painted and lips rouged, she's the Vulpesse, straight from the seedy dance halls of Val Royeaux to here in Lexie's house, unchanged.

Her smile is bright and charismatic as she takes Bastien's other arm with a coy tilt of her shoulders. "No such worries," she decides, "we shall be flying."

[coquettish_trees]

Alexandrie claps her hands together with genuine delight at Fifi’s appearance, the sound sharp and unmuffled by the customary presence of her gloves.

“Oh la la! La Vulpesse!” She exclaims, briefly abandoning her assumed Fereldan accent in celebration. “Magnifique!” A little nudge for Bastien as she threads her arm through his. “Perhaps the both of us should worry for our shoes.

“Now! Lead on!” After all, she has little enough idea where they’re headed.

[cozen]

"A vision," Bastien agrees, rocking to the side at Alexandrie's nudge to lean fondly into Fifi's shoulder for a moment. But then they're off.

Walking with a woman on each arm is a bit impractical, really, and he doesn't help. He spends a few seconds miming helplessness at the door, with both hands that might have opened it trapped at his sides, and in the street he exaggerates the difficulty of matching their disparate strides, watching their feet while he speeds up and then comes to an abrupt halt. Twice.

[untiltheyarent]

"Bastien," Fifi says with a little smirk, "if you're this tripped up before the fact, I dread the sight of you on the dance floor." She gives his heel a gentle kick, otherwise keeping pace well with him and Lexie.

Loki

[coquettish_trees]

Save a few moments in the morning, Alexandrie had not seen her husband all day. Save a few moments in the evening, she’d not seen him yesterday either, which often means he’d come across some bit of particularly interesting arcana and gotten his nose stuck in it. Book or artifact, it hardly mattered.

If it was very interesting she might not have seen him this evening either... but she was taking a break, and had made the executive decision that he was taking a break, and so had shown up at his door with an armful of feather-stuffed blankets, a pipe, and the look on her face that she knew quite well he had trouble resisting.

To her great pleasure, the trouble continued.

“What would you,” the lady asks half an hour or so later from her recline in the small nest they’d built, one hand supporting her head and the other attempting to lay a finger on Loki’s nose with absolutely painstaking deliberation, still only managing to land it on his cheek, “be doing now, had you not come south?”

[hwaaaitsme]

Loki, who had been all but hip deep in study, lets his head loll slightly so that he can graze her wrist with his mouth. A casual imitation of a kiss. His head picks up as his brows lift and he politely contemplates her question. Draped in blankets with his wife at his side, it is a strange thought to consider.

"I assume you mean had none of this happened," Loki drawls lightly. He shouldn't like to contemplate how he would be maneuvering the machinations of Corypheus's court or the shambles his country was put into, so he doesn't.

"I imagine..." He begins and lets his elbow slide out from beneath him, reclining further so that he may look at her and the ceiling at once. "I would be coordinating the transport of materials to enlarge our naval fleet...and possibly bribing pirates."

He looks back at her.

"What would you be doing?"

[coquettish_trees]

“Nothing so coarse as bribing pirates,” she teases, letting her finger wander down to his jaw and then drop to the blankets between them. “I have always been the very picture of delicate refinement and propriety.” She flutters her eyelashes demurely.

Not entirely falsehood. Loki knows well enough what passes for propriety in Orlais.

“All having gone to plan, I should be witnessing the regrettable social retirement of...” Alexandrie pauses for extended consideration, attempting to gather the threads of her plans of nearly two years ago through the pleasant languor blanketing her mind. “Baroness Lirette.”

“And thinking it meaningful,” she appends thoughtfully, letting her own elbow slide so that her head is level with his.

John

[coquettish_trees]

While Alexandrie would never purchase anything from the Lowtown stalls newly laden with the colder season’s garb herself, she is not above making a point to walk through the market once in a while on her way to the Gallows to see if there’s anything she ought to send Fifi down for to add to the collection she keeps in the case that a disguise is called for.

Nor is she above providing unsolicited advice to anyone she should happen to meet on the walk.

“That dark blue cloak would look exceedingly well on you, Master Silver,” is one piece of such advice, delivered as she reaches beside him to lift the hem of the garment. “I grant it is perhaps not entirely suited for the seas, but you spend enough time on the land now to warrant a small sartorial change, no?”

forgive my tardiness

[hornswoggle]

Meanwhile John patronizes Lowtown stalls solely for the pleasure of haggling. It's all good-natured, and he inevitably tips as much as he saves; the benefit goes beyond the item. It's always good to have friends, especially friends who do a fair bit of trading. After all, John still has a crew to direct towards prizes now and again.

But he is not so attached to his routine that he doesn't welcome interruption. He wouldn't have expected to meet Lexie down here, though he doesn't say as much. Instead, he pinches a fold of the fabric from the opposite edge of the cloak in question, appraising.

"Considering this will be my second winter spent in Kirkwall, I suppose you have a fair point," John agrees. "But I've always found cloaks limiting. It seems like an invitation for someone to tread on your hem at the worst possible moment."

no, mine!

[coquettish_trees]

“Or the best,” she counters with a conspiratorial smile. “I have arranged to be terribly insulted by the clumsiness of others on more than one occasion. For the price of a dirtied hemline you might learn a great deal about how someone thinks of themselves, of you, of the two of you in relation.” The smile turns bright and carefree again, a woman concerned by little more than how well the fall of it might flatter.

“And they billow so dramatically!”

no for sure it is me who is tardiest

[hornswoggle]

While this advice could be mistaken as frivolous, John takes it simply as a reminder of her particular skillset. There's something impressive about how Lexie manages and anticipates people.

"Well in that case, how can I pass it up?"

At which point the merchant tending the stall brightens slightly. John directs a slight smile to him, before gesturing at the wares and looking back towards Lexie.

"And of course, I must offer to purchase something for you. Perhaps one of the scarves?"

ah, but here is proof that it is I!

[coquettish_trees]

“How generous of you!” she exclaims, drifting forward to make her own examination of the fabrics. It’s an exacting dance of a process filled with little movements and changes of expression that are meant to look unconscious on her part while she angles carefully so that they can be seen perfectly by the merchant: interest, curiosity, disappointment, lifts of scarves and their quick dismissal with tiny frowns. Eventually she looks at the merchant with raised eyebrows as if to say and are there others?, stretching her neck to peer behind him to where he might be secreting away something for a lady of discernment, and preparing to immediately reward their appearance with obvious delight.