faderift | I Wanna Dance With Somebody (Open)

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I Wanna Dance With Somebody (Open)

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.

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[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."

Edited 2023-03-11 19:04 (UTC)

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."

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.

"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.

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.

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.

"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.

"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.

"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."

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."

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.

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?"

"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.

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?”

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.

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.

"Yes and yes," she says, subtly angling them over toward the cake. She appreciates a philosophy that includes not passing up cake when offered. "So the exact number sort of depends on how you count, because I've been here twice. First time was, um... 9:42 local year, when I arrived? I was here about three years. Came back about two years ago, though it's wild because I have new memories from home and the amount of time doesn't exactly match so, truly, I'd tell you what birthday this is if I had any real idea." Cosima glances over at Clarisse with a rueful smile before slicing her some lemon cake.

"But I'd round it to five years of Thedas time, nonconsecutive. It's pretty ... well. When I first came, Riftwatch didn't exist yet, we were still part of the Inquisition."

She gestures lightly with her wine glass, not in danger of spilling but closer than she would have been a few hours ago. "Oh, if you ever need more, I dated a musician one time, I've got like one million ways to say I appreciate what you do but it does nothing for me aesthetically," she says with good humor. "Though honestly, we had so many ways to get music back home, I feel like here, I wouldn't want to discourage anyone who offered to play. No matter how experimental."

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?"

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.

That's... a lot.

First of all, Clarisse knew that this is supposed to be permanent or whatever, but hearing somebody say they've been here for five years so casually is still kind of fucking scary.

Second— "You left and came back? I thought we couldn't go home again." Does it sound like a flicker of hope has crept into her voice? Maaaybe.

The way she pauses is clearly thoughtful; she'd definitely like them both to be more relaxed if they're going to get existential about rifters' existence. But, on the other hand, she believes in being honest with people.

"Alright, so here's the deal. I can tell you what I think happened, if you want. But in the absence of that, here's what I've got that's just facts. I was here for three years, then I was gone. About two years ago, I got spat out of a rift, same as the first time. But I had memories of like, another year or two in my home world that I hadn't had before." She looks at Clarisse, intent. "There wasn't any gap, at home. In the new memories, I hadn't been missing, I had no memory of Thedas while I was there. But when I came through the rift, here, I got back my first three years in Thedas plus the new stuff from where I came from."

She could have gone home, but that's not what Cosima thinks happened. On the other hand, it's a party and making that explicit feels like it would harsh the vibe.

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.

It is kind of harshing the vibe, but that's also Clarisse's MO. She doesn't really believe in putting off hard conversations just so people can be more comfortable, but at the same time, Cosima's answer seems to satisfy her... enough for now, anyway. Enough so that she reaches out and starts pouring herself a cup of wine as Cosima finishes speaking.

"My friend says there's this theory that we're here, but there's another version of us still living back where we came from."

She takes a sip of the wine and nods. Excellent. But, anyway, "I hate thinking about this, actually, so we don't have to get into it. Since it's your birthday and all, we can just stick to the normal, boring shit instead. Like... where are you from, what's your favorite food that Thedas has no clue about, that stuff."

"Oh, I assure you. There are perfectly good reasons to discourage someone."

She does not punctuated this with a sidelong glance. But let no one say that Wysteria de Foncé is unaware of her limits.

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I Wanna Dance With Somebody (Open)

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