faderift | rodeo drive, baby.

Entry tags:

rodeo drive, baby.

WHO: Chaos shoppers
WHAT: Preparations for fancy party
WHEN: Mid-Kingsway
WHERE: Kirkwall
NOTES: We're here to peer pressure Ellie and acquire some fancy clothes, folks.

The invitation had said Formal attire required.

There is, of course, some question as to what exactly "formal attire" means when it's an Orlesian issuing the invitation, but without a doubt it means a trip to a certain swath of shops in Hightown where formal attire is available in a variety of different options. Does formal attire mean dresses with hip-high slits? Does it mean a silk tunic with an abundance of ruffles? Does it mean velvet or brocade or chiffon?

The shopkeepers will be sure to advise, if given even a breath of opportunity to swoop in with their suggestions. A budget? What's that? Surely it's not applicable to such a momentous occassion. Why, just step this way, look at this garment, one of a kind, isn't the color just divine—

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Here's the thing—

Derrica quite likes to shop.

It's rare that she has such a good excuse for considering items like the dresses she has over her arm, all whispery, silky fabric and delicately stitched details. They're costly options, and maybe she'll come away without either, but at least she has a concrete excuse to consider them.

She's swept up a few more options as she makes her way back to the fitting area, only pausing upon coming across a familiar face and smiling a little sheepishly as she shifts the garments and says, "I couldn't decide," with a shake of her head before asking, "Have you had any luck?"

"We'll find something," Derrica is saying placatingly, her elbow hooked through Holden's bent arm as they pass through the doors of the shop. "You can't go to a party thrown by an Orlesian Duke in your every day tunic."

Would it be an affront? Maybe not. Riftwatch isn't exactly Val Royeux, but why take the risk?

"I don't think anyone would miss me if I didn't go," is what he's saying, not without good humor, but also not unaware of the fact that her hold on his arm means he can't make a retreat. He's absolutely sure this is by design.

He wouldn't actually show up to a party like that in normal wear, and he's gotten increasingly used to ye olde way of dress. But he sure misses the days when it was just a question of acquiring a nice suit and dress shirt, and not —

"I'm not trying that on, for the record," with a nod towards some particularly poofy shirt nearby.

Somewhere, from behind a row of clothes, comes a very familiar disembodied voice:

"—Don't be a coward, darling."

Look —

"we can't all be as pretty as you are."

An immediate smile for that voice, regardless of whether or not it's seen.

"You will be, after we find the right thing for you to wear," Derrica reassures. "Astarion, are you going to help?"

Help is a broad word, but still. There's possibility.

"Absolutely not. I trust you both. Deeply."

He does not.

He leans down to Derrica, close enough to say, in a stage whisper,

"I trust you more than I trust him with this."

He's seen the way Astarion dresses!! Derrica, on the other hand, surely won't lead him astray.

"I have long ears, you know. I heard that."

This is not a stage whisper, for reference's sake.

"Are you going to come out from behind there and prove him wrong?" Derrica prompts, flashing a smile up at Holden before releasing his arm. There's a comforting, second squeeze to his wrist. No, she won't let anyone put him in ruffles.

Stepping around the rack, Derrica ruffles through a few pieces hung on the rack and tips a dark green coat towards Holden with a questioning look.

This time, when Derrica looks up at him, he mouths, Don't encourage him. He straightens as she lets go, approaches the rack and frowns at the options faintly.

"Maybe," he allows, pulls out a pair of trousers at random and then immediately replaces it. Nope, that's a no.

"What, you don't want the red and purple stripes?" Ellie pipes up from behind the rack, popping up to lay her forearms over it.

She gives the shopkeep a smile when he glares at her.

So fucking dryly —

"They're not my color."

A fond smile for Ellie, in spite of the suggestion.

"No, I think we need a darker color. Maybe blue," Derrica suggests, pitched a little louder for the benefit of their audience. Astarion has not materialized, which Derrica takes a invitation to begin flicking through another rack with a critical hum.

"That," he admits, "sounds a lot better."

Hard evidence that he's right to trust no one but Derrica with this task!! He looks through that particular rack till he reaches the end of it, then frowns as he glances at some of the displays. They don't all look too outlandish, if he's being honest, but,

"I don't even know what I'll do with these clothes after the party." Then, "Unless someone else gets married."

He's already attended one wedding, it's not impossible.

It's water under the bridge, their prior conversation. And at least on Astarion's part, most things are: he hisses, he spits, he begs and pleads and promises— he forgets without forgiving, or asking forgiveness, for that matter.

Some steps away, still paging through row after row of useless fabric, Astarion's expression sinks like a stone the second he sees what she's holding.

"Gods, darling, no," his tongue pressed to the back of an overlong tooth, it doesn't take more than a stride or two to reach her side for the sake of beginning to tug on this or that. Most of what she's gathered, in fact. "we want you to glow when you're there, not ooze."

"The green isn't that terrible, is it?" Derrica questions, yielding her findings to Astarion with a small frown. There had been a discount involved, and Derrica had considered that maybe there was a possibility it would look striking once it was on her body properly.

However, somewhere in Astarion's examination, Derrica tacks on, "Are you looking for yourself too?"

There's an obvious sentiment lurking after: Don't let me distract you.

"For this soirée? Yes, my dear. There's a difference between something suiting you," he starts, having now taken away at least a good half of her options. Likely the discounted ones. "And something being suitable."

It's for her own good, after all. The last thing she needs is to have some noble running a joke at her expense, or making an offhanded comment about her based on some utterly inane assumption.

He isn't a considerate man, but he knows this world. Deeply.

"You'll thank me for it later— and besides, I've already found exactly what I needed, so I'm all yours, now."

"Tell me about what you've picked out," Derrica prompts, passing him to begin sorting through what's left in the crook of her arm, and hang them one by one on the hook beside the curtained fitting area. Her fingers linger over the fabric, blues and reds and purples, gold detailing and sashes and draped necklines. "Unless you want me to be surprised when I see you there."

Whatever arguments she might have about what's suitable, whether or not it matters if she impresses. It doesn't feel as if the stakes are particularly high for this gathering. It's Romain and it's his family, and it's no bearing on Riftwatch business that Derrica can tell.

Astarion, in contrast, unceremoniously dumps the unworthy garments aside atop the nearest waiting lounger. The staff seem irritated by it, of course, but given that they're only staff, if need be Astarion will simply claim to be a servant in the employ of some such noble or other with only the haughtiest of sway (they never check, after all) ensuring they'll shut up as soon as they open their chatty little mouths.

His delicate hands clasp, he's practically preening.

"It's a simple little thing. Appropriate, but not too daunting. I need to slip slowly into Hightown's circles without making a splash, otherwise too many feathers get ruffled. Too much gossipmongering and resentment when it comes to change." A Rifter elf with grand aspirations might seem farfetched to some, but stranger things have always happened— and Astarion has faith in himself, more than anything else. He won't just fluidly assimilate like Thranduil. He'll do more. Better. Burn brighter, if the world doesn't end between now and then.

"You'll see it at the affair itself, but in the meanwhile..."

Dresses. Now.

"Here," Derrica is saying, drawing Ellie along in her wake. "We can find something that can be tailored, I think."

Not a dress. The overstuffed racks lining the back wall are filled with one-offs, things unmatched or left over from earlier seasons or sporting some type of deficit or simply not quite the style favored by Hightown society.

"I know you prefer trousers, but what about colors?"

There is quite the selection to choose from. Derrica's hand has already left Ellie's back to test the fabric of a silky tunic, deep red with winding gold trim. Too fine for daily wear, but the colors—

Derrica can't justify the purchase for herself, but if Ellie is interested in red...

The whole thing makes Ellie massively uncomfortable. In her own world there was never such thing as fancy. Fancy meant clean-ish clothes, the ones with the fewest patches and holes, maybe ditching sneakers and taking a brush to her boots. Dina had long-since given up in despair.

Fancy, in another life, another reality that now seems very much like a dream, she'd grown through her teenage years mired in this shit. And she'd grown to hate it with every ounce of herself. Nathan had done his best to coach her through being charming towards the sponsors, and she could, but fake-smiling her way through the upper echelons still had her stomach churning in remembered rage.

Still. Orders were orders, and Ellie was highly susceptible to Wysteria's strongly worded letters.

And she had Derrica on her side.

Actually clothes shopping is dizzying, and Ellie is trying very, very hard not to be a grump. She is not succeeding.

"Fuck if I know," Ellie mutters, looking at the vest. It seems garish as fuck, the red too bright and eye-catching. An easily-visible target.

"... blue?" she fumbles.

Edited 2021-09-11 04:04 (UTC)

"Blue," Derrica repeats, pushing the vest back among the others. "Alright, we'll find something blue."

It doesn't take very much to clock Ellie's trepidation. Whether it's the shopping or the party of some combination of both is hard to parse. Maybe Derrica could ask, but she's opted to leave it alone for the moment. She flicks a bit further, coming across greens and blacks, but no blues. Or worse, fabric that's too heavy, and Derrica knows immediately won't be comfortable for Ellie to wear all night.

It feels like a given, that whatever they pick should have room for knives, or some kind of weapon. In case of an emergency.

"When I first came to Riftwatch, we all went out to a party at an estate in Ostwick," Derrica tells her, by way of lightening the mood as she wrinkles her nose at a black velvet coat. "There was an assassin that we were meant to stop."

None of the clothes really jump out at her as something she could see herself wearing. Back home she hadn't had an interest in clothes in what felt like years; she'd defaulted more and more to wearing old things of Joel's until they started to fall apart. His old shirts, his jackets...

Even before then it had been graphic t-shirts, sweatshirts, plain jeans. The only thing she really had gotten into were her sneakers, but they don't make anything like them here.

She rubs some of the velvet between her fingers, thoughtful, and when Derrica calls her back to earth, she doesn't fight the beginnings of a grin.

"That actually sounds awesome," she says in utter seriousness. "I mean, not that somebody ordered an assassin. An undercover operation. Did you get them?"

"I think we must have. I don't really remember, exactly."

It seems like an odd thing to forget, but, well—

A small, rueful smile, one shoulder shrugging. She remembers what she'd been doing for the end of that party, and it had occupied most of her attention. But considering the night hadn't ended in tragedy but instead in everyone leaving more or less uneventfully, they must have prevented the actual assassination.

"It was a strange party," Derrica proclaims. "Romain's will be easier. All we have to do is enjoy ourselves."

Which sounds simple, even if Derrica has a suspicion that Ellie might find it a little more difficult than just arriving and going with the flow.

"Must not have been that important."

Derrica would remember if anybody died, surely. Ellie gives her a thoughtful look, then reaches past her to feel a length of watered silk, letting it slip through her fingers. It's beautifully soft, and it seems to almost catch on her rough fingertips.

"How do you even wash something like this?" she mumbles. "What if you got blood on it?"

"Uh...."

Cole feels...out of place. He had hidden himself from the shopkeepers on his way in, letting himself appear underneath a rack of dresses amidst the fabric. He's a bit less grimy than he had been - Allumin had seen to him getting a proper scrub-down and he was trying to keep up with it somewhat - but his clothes are still threadbare and torn, and being amongst all the finery is making his head spin.

Still, Astarion had told him he should do as humans do, had told him this would be an opportunity for practice - and so he's here, picking his way around all the beautiful garments with wide, terrified eyes. He looks at the flurry of colors in Derrica's arms, eyebrows furrowing.

"...Luck? I don't know if I have any. How can I tell?"

Her expression softens further in response to the look on his face, the uncertainty in his voice. She shifts the fabric in her arms, hitching it neatly up and in, so she can better carry on this conversation.

"In this case, you can tell if you have something new to wear," Derrica tells him. "Have you see anything you like?"

Though Cole might not—

Well, judging from the expression on his face, Cole isn't very interested in shopping. Derrica isn't sure that's something that'll pass in a few minutes.

"Oh. I...."

He casts a glance around, expression not one of disdain, but plainly one of being deeply, deeply lost. It isn't that he isn't interested in shopping, exactly - it's that he has never done it before, with little to no understanding as to what he should be looking for. What is wrong with what he is wearing?

But he wants to try, and she is being very kind.

"I don't know...what to look at. I've never bought new clothes before."

Mostly he just patched those same ratty leathers over and over again. And even before that, the real Cole didn't exactly have deep closets, either. He reaches out to paw at a nearby dress, testing its texture under his fingertips. Of course, he has no concept of any gender conformity attached to any of this.

"I think I need...help."

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rodeo drive, baby.

ota.

holden / https://youtu.be/iRER1Rbg9_o

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topples back in here

takes your hands

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ellie.

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good luck

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