I Wanna Dance With Somebody (Open)

[youwonscience]

WHO: Cosima Niehaus, any Riftwatch personnel who have not been banished from the Gallows
WHAT: A chill birthday/dance party
WHEN: March Drakonis 9, evening
WHERE: Fourth floor of the former mage tower

If they weren't hosting company, there probably would have been a sign or two. Cosima is not, however, entirely clear what the Chantry thinks of dancing. As it is, Cosima makes a point to tell those she's friendly with, as well as the entirety of the Research Division; she also makes it clear they should feel free to spread the word, that any Riftwatch agents who want to stop in are more than welcome. That word is: A quiet party with dancing, Drakonis 9, a couple hours after dinner.



Arrival

As Cosima currently has the fourth floor to herself, she hasn't set up in her own room, but rather the one across the way. She's pushed the furniture toward the edges of the room to make a larger dance floor and requisitioned some plates and cups (that she has promised very seriously to return all of). She has placed her approximation of an iPod shuffle in a bowl to attempt to amplify its sound a bit, and it's jauntily playing whatever random song it has decided to play at the moment. There are no real decorations to speak of, but she's thrown some extra cushions on the beds to encourage their use as makeshift couches.

For refreshments, she encouraged people to bring anything they wanted, but she's provided a good quantity of wine and one unfancy but large lemon cake. These she's purchased with her own funds, rather than begged from the kitchen.

The party is late enough that anyone other than those on particular assignments (or guard duty) should be done with work. The music is unlikely to get especially loud under the circumstances, and Cosima isn't looking to throw a rager anyway. She mainly wants to rope some people into dancing with her, and she's not going to be put off by claims of being bad at it. Those who arrive early are especially vulnerable to being grabbed by the hand and given a good-natured tug.

Later

For those who stay late (or arrive late), things chill out in the early hours. In addition to the wine, there's some smoking, and Cosima is inclined to conversation, curled up on one of the beds pushed against the wall. The music is still playing, but someone needed the bowl for something else, so it's necessarily even softer; the candles have burned down, giving the room a warmer glow.

If someone seems hesitant to come join her, Cosima's quick to wave them over with a languid loop of her arm, unwilling to see anyone left out even as things get mellow.

Comments

later;

[heirring]

[ooc: thread jacking welcome!]

"—Which is precisely why I think we should disregard everything Beauséjour has written on the subject. If he is so biased, which we had just enumerated the many ways he most certainly is, then it would be far more reasonable to approach the field and it's scholarship as if he had never written anything at all in the subject. But Wysteria, you will tell me, what then of Charron or Sister Martinet whose most formative works were first efforts to discredit Beauséjour's papers? Well to that I say—"

Here, finally, Wysteria pauses. Ensconced among a great number of cushions on one of the beds turned couches, she is cheerfully rosy faced (having indulged in a considerable helping of wine) and ever so slightly glassy eyed from the glazed affect afforded by the smoke. Yes, what should one do about Charron and Sister Martinet? She sucks down another bit of the elfroot smoke to be certain, coughing twice as she exhales and passes the joint back to Cosima.

"Well, I'm undecided. I only think it's a shame when a whole subject has more words in it dedicated to which of its ideas are incorrect than which of them are right. Happy birthday, by the way. I was beginning to think everyone must hate theirs."

[youwonscience]

The speech is considerably more endearing several glasses of wine and at least one round of elfroot in. At this last bit, Cosima smiles, languid but warm. "Nah, birthdays are great. As long as no one asks me how old I am, I've done the math on that like three different ways and I've sort of given up."

Age is just a number (that she can't figure out how to calculate).

"How would you celebrate yours, back where you're from? This isn't too far off for me, though I'd actually get to pick the music back home."

As if it heard her, the Fade-touched iPhone begins playing a Flaming Lips track which only very loosely works with the party's current vibe.

[heirring]

"Oh, well I suppose it would depend on the year and how advantageously positioned your family was. But ordinarily with a bit of sweet very like your cake tonight, and perhaps a small gift.

"Although the wildest party I've ever attended was my cousin Eramus' first birthday. Everyone absolutely falling over themselves—I'm sorry," her tone had been beginning to wander, but here she interrupts herself quite briskly to say: "But has your little music box broken?"

Even she, tone deaf as she is, can tell it's certainly making sounds.

[youwonscience]

It gets her to laugh, though not unkindly. "No more than it was when I got here. It's ... not exactly how it works back home, but here it's just got on and off. The particular song that comes out seems like it's pretty much random as far as I can tell. I think mostly stuff I had on the version from home, it's not just any song in the universe. I think the Fade kind of just did its best with the concept when I came through." She waves a hand, vaguely, and adds, "In your defense, this band is fairly experimental even when you have the century or so of context that went before."

[heirring]

"Experimental," she repeats back. "I see."

For someone who is somewhat notorious for that very thing, Wysteria doesn't sound particularly supportive of the concept when it comes to music. What's the point of there's no dancing that can be done with it? However, always the opportunist—

"I will have to remember that as an excuse the next time someone asks me to play anything."

Not that she's been invited to bang away on a pianoforte for some time. But it would be a fine thing to have in one's pocket if it ever came to pass.

arrival

[laruetheday]

Clarisse isn't in Research and, probably wisely, nobody has told her about this party. Here she is anyway, though, drawn to a stranger's (extra) room by the sound of music. (Look, sometimes you have to take matters of entertainment into your own hands, and this month is looking to be extra boring with Mother Pleasance around. Don't judge.)

She wanders in looking for the iPod thing in the bowl, but stops when she sees the wine and cake and the makeshift dance floor, like—Oh. Someone's having a party. Awkward.

"Shit," she says, already inching back toward the open doorway, "sorry."

[youwonscience]

"No, hey, no apologies necessary," Cosima says, catching her sudden freeze and backward motion. She approaches, though not so close as to invade Clarisse's space.

"It's not private, come hang if you want. It's ... Clarisse, right? I'm Cosima; my work doesn't overlap with Forces like, almost ever, but there aren't so many Rifters I don't try to keep at least a little bit of an eye out, you know?" She offers a hand, clearly closer to an American offer to shake than the more clasp-like Thedosian greetings common in Kirkwall.

[laruetheday]

Clarisse accepts the offered hand and gives it a similarly Americanized shake before letting go. Though she hasn't met Cosima before, Clarisse does know her name. Because it's Greek, she obviously took notice of it when she heard it in passing.

"Yeah. Clarisse." She's glancing around the party, eyeing up the wine in particular. "Is this, like... a Research thing?"

Look, if she knows anything about seriously smart people, it's that they also love to party.

[youwonscience]

"No, a Riftwatch thing. Well," she immediately corrects, "a wanted-to-take-the-excuse-to-have-a-party thing, it's not like, officially sanctioned. But it's meant to be an open door. Research is probably over-represented because I spread the word by mouth and I'm at work in the division offices a lot."

Her smile is warm and open, unfeigned. "But I was hoping anyone would drop in. I've got music and all this space. And cake, I totally couldn't eat the amount of cake I have if no one showed."

[laruetheday]

Well... okay. Clarisse steps a little further into the room, and her expression relaxes a bit.

"I never say no to cake," she admits. Or... you know. Wine.

She's looking around at the party at large, taking it in, but after a few seconds she turns her attention back to Cosima. "You're a rifter too, right? You been here a long time?"

arrival

[sprent]

Gela knows of Cosima and does not cross paths with the Research division often but she heard tell of dancing, and that anybody can come if they want to. That's more than enough for her to poke her nose in. The party-thrower herself is busy talking to other people and so Gela waits to catch her attention, inserting herself into other conversations until they run into each other by whatever plays the music-

she leans over to take a cup, and drop a little handful of stems into it. A tiny centerpiece, for her snack table.

"Spring is here," she explains, when Cosima looks, "And I didn't have any food to bring!"

A treat for the eyes, instead.

[youwonscience]

"Wow, that's so nice of you, I love it." Cosima's enthusiasm is clearly genuine, especially as she immediately glances around, adding, "We should find them some water, so they stay nice, there should be some over by the wine..." She waves at someone nearer and manages to successful mime her way to some water passed their way by a few hands.

"Thanks for coming. I would have posted signs but I wasn't sure if that counted as good behavior, considering." Does the Chantry hate birthdays? Who knows, she's just a rifter. Better to ask forgiveness, etc.

[sprent]

Gela chuckles, tucking her hair back behind her ear, "Oh, true! But I've met her, you know, and she isn't all that bad."

Perhaps she thinks she's made a very good impression? The conversation they had together in the gardens was incredibly low-stakes, and probably didn't win or lose her any points for Riftwatch. It was about tea and weeding flower beds, how much damage could it have done. "Does that mean once the Chantry's gone we have a second party? A wilder one?"

[youwonscience]

She laughs, good-natured. "I mean, I'll never say no to a party, but we should find another occasion. Having two separate birthday parties for yourself in your 30s feels like a lot."

She arranges the flowers in the cup a little, but she really has no background in it, so it doesn't look much different than it did when Gela just dropped them in. Cosima gives up with a small shrug.

"But I do think it's important to like ... relax, now and then. We're all overworked, people gotta find a way to release tension. Well, I guess Forces division members hit each other in the training yard, maybe that counts." She's clearly teasing more than genuinely disparaging the division.

[sprent]

"I think the occasion would be that they left," she says shrewdly, and reaches past Cosima toward the table, plucking a handful of something from a bowl to munch on. She adds, once she's swallowed, "But there's nothin' wrong without being a little overzealous about your birthday either."

Because that's fun. And then she waves a snack around while she talks. "No, you're right. And after... everythin' that's been goin' on lately, we're a little overdue for a party. Not just after –" Starkhaven, a heavy word she doesn't want to say out loud even as she implies it, "but the nightmares too, and... well."

Maybe mostly the nightmares. "This is far more enjoyable."

later;

[grindset]

It's during the late-slash-early hours of chill when heavy footfalls fade in from the corridor. There's something inexorable about the rhythm, steady as a pulse—and, as the track changes, in unintentionally complementary timing to bowl music. On reaching the fourth floor, after a conspicuous pause, they're replaced by softer tapping (sadly not on beat).

Tap, tap, and Viktor half-appears in the doorway, leaning in to assess the state of things, with the air of a theatre tech trying not to catch the eye of the audience. If Cosima is too engaged to notice, he waits there until she does—or until she's been alerted by someone else—and then beckons her to the door with a fluttering gesture.

[youwonscience]

It's not just that she's been partying that makes her look genuinely glad to see him when she catches sight of him in the door. Even if she and Viktor don't have lots of long, personal talks, they went through something together that makes her feel genuinely warm toward him. (Trust falls have nothing on fade-touched bear attacks, apparently.) She didn't expect him to come at all, and in this case, being wrong is a pleasant surprise.

She extricates herself and makes her way over to the door. Her voice is quiet enough not to actively draw other partygoers' attention, but not so low it's hard for him to hear. "Hey man, it was really good of you to stop by. Do you want some cake? Something to drink?"

It's not so much that she's missed his failure to come in as she's making sure it's not because he doesn't feel welcome.

[grindset]

It occurs to Viktor that he wouldn't mind eating cake, actually, though the sense-memory that word elicits is unlikely to be fulfilled by anything this world has to offer—regardless, that's not why he's currently haunting this hallway. The primary reason is in his hand. (And born of similar affinity.)

"Hello, eh... thank you, but, I just wanted to deliver this."

What he offers is a smallish rectangular box, wrought of brass. The hinged lid bears a hand-tooled motif that, to Cosima, may resemble art deco; it's reminiscent of the styling of both Viktor's crutch and the vest he often wears, though references neither directly. The box's edges are rounded, its finish matte, and its overall size and shape are roughly those an eyeglass case ought to be.

[youwonscience]

She looks genuinely surprised and delighted at the gift as she takes it. "Oh my god, is this what I think it is?" She carefully opens the box, suggesting the question was at least semi-rhetorical.

[grindset]

"Just the frames," Viktor says as the lid lifts, in a bid to mitigate any possible disappointment. Not that he isn't content with his work—these spectacle frames are as finely wrought as he could manage with the tools available, in that same decolike style. Touches of dark brown enamel on the arms and upper rims. A hint of cat's eye to the shape.

"They'll need to be fitted to you."

He fully eyeballed them from observation; at least some of the notes he's taken in department meetings were estimations. (The measurer's eye he refused to give up.)

"A bit presumptuous, I know, but..."

later.

[portalling]

Stephen Strange and Cosima Niehaus have been casually and distantly polite, the way colleagues can be — the same way he could recognise a fellow doctor or monk, know their name, nod to them in the hallways, but not be particularly close to them.

When that invitation was slipped into everyone’s mailbox in Research, he’d initially filed it away and then almost immediately disregarded it. When the evening finally arrives, he’s still working hours into the party, a consummate workaholic — but there’s a limit to how much he can do here, and so he finally decides he shouldn’t be an asshole, and he walks across the Gallows to join the party in the other tower. He hovers in the doorway, looking a little tense and lost, before the woman thankfully beckons him over.

He worked literal years at Metro-General without learning some of the others’ names, just glazing right past paying real attention to them, but Riftwatch isn’t MGH and he’s not the same Stephen Strange who had once swaggered down those hallways, so. It’s time to finally make an effort.

“Happy birthday,” he says, handing Cosima the wine, but then record-scratches— “Wait, is that an iPod?”

[youwonscience]

She is a little bit high by the time Stephen arrives, which is partly responsible for the way she lights up at the question. "Thanks, man," to the wine, "no, you haven't seen my magic music brick yet, you gotta check it out."

She extricates herself from the cushions and puts the wine on the table with the other drinks before heading over to where the bowl is serving as a very low-tech amplifier. When he can get a closer look, Stephen can see that on closer inspection it appears to be an iPhone (if he's especially up on his Apple products, an iPhone 6S in Space Gray). The screen is black, but its speakers are gently blaring Queen's "The Show Must Go On."

"So," Cosima says, leaning one hip against the table. "The first time I was here, my phone was just totally bricked. My phones, actually, I think I still had two at the time. But this time, it plays music. As far as I can tell, only music I had on it at the time I came through the rift, and in a totally random order, but it hasn't died yet, which is pretty great since I have absolutely no way to charge it. Functionality-wise, I've got on, off, and sometimes volume up and volume down, but those two can be ... touchy." The tone, generally, is how wild is this.

[portalling]

“What the,” Strange says, a flat kind of shock, but he’s leaning low in order to stare more closely at the phone in its bowl, irrationally wary of touching it in case that shatters the unexpected magic. Music, for— six months? has it already been six months? good lord— has been limited to the occasional live musician, the band playing at Satinalia. He’d almost thought the concept of recorded songs would be a bygone thing, left behind to those other worlds.

“That’s… amazing. Also maybe a little disconcerting, that it doesn’t require charging,” how does that magic work? it’s not exactly a spell he could do back home either, “but good lord, it’s playing Queen. This thing is playing Queen.” He peers up at Cosima, all party trepidation swiftly banished in favour of just, well, delight.

“In the ranking of useless magical doohickeys, I think this is probably one of the strongest ones I’ve seen.”

[youwonscience]

"Seriously?" she asks, not doubting him but lightly surprised. (She can't help but smiling a bit at his enthusiasm, though.) "Tech is definitely not my area, and magic isn't really either, beyond what I'm studying with the Fade's effect on biology. So I guess I don't really have any way to gauge. I thought about asking Tony about it, but to be honest, I was mildly afraid he'd end up taking it apart and it would stop working and it includes my emotional support playlists."

She did fine for three years without them, but that doesn't mean she wants to give them up now.

[portalling]

“It’s a powerful contender just for the sheer novelty factor and whimsy. Like, I can summon a magical sword, sure — but between that and a permanently enchanted iPhone, I might opt for the iPhone.”

The music brick can’t kill a man, but some things are more important than killing. Everyday delight might be one of them.

Strange has straightened back up to his full height, still charmed. With the low music and the faint whiff of mellow narcotic smoke, this thing feels like a party. Just a normal party. “This is the first birthday party I’ve been to here,” he remarks. He’d omitted telling anyone about his own. “How’s the past year been treating you?”