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

[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.

[coquettish_trees]

Simultaneous with the kick to Bastien's heel, Alexandrie 'stumbles' at one of the abrupt stops and steps on his toe.

"No!" she exclaims, Fereldan again as she leans back behind him to speak to Fifi, "it will be glorious." Then, eyes sparkling conspiratorially, "I heard him say he could keep pace with you."

[cozen]

It’s a coin toss. Kicked and trod-upon, he could protest that he would never say such a thing, that he learned that lesson the hard way and cherishes his knees and dignity both too much to try again.

Or he could do what he does: slip loose from their arms to turn and walk backwards with all the nimble-footed competence he’d just been pretending to lack.

“I can,” he says.

He cannot. He can go backwards down the stairs that cut behind him, when the street takes its downward turn past two posted guards and toward Lowtown, and he can do it without hesitating or glancing over his shoulder to confirm the drop. But that’s a different skill. Fifi will destroy him, if she wants to, and he will go down insisting he had a chance, because he wants to.

“I have been practicing,” he assures her, which isn’t particularly true. “Preparing for this very moment.”