[open] beach episode volume 2: gallows edition

[altusimperius]

WHO: everybody who wants
WHAT: (lukewarm) BEACH PARTY (on rubble, in harbor)
WHEN: late Justinian
WHERE: the Gallows, amidst its newly-acquired sea view
NOTES: he's trying

I. Prep

He didn't ask for help overtly, but Benedict is clearly working hard setting up the space he's designated for the company to have their beach staycation: drapings taken from his own stash and salvaged from the Gallows' erstwhile guest rooms are drawn across glyphed-in-place poles to create shade. He's hauled out a table, onto which he proceeds to place a variety of whatever canapés he could afford to procure with his own wages-- it's not a feast, all right-- and beside which he rolls two barrels of decent-ish wine.

From the baths come a stack of towels piled high in his arms, hindering his vision to such a degree that he may crash into someone not paying attention; pillows and the like come next, in armloads that take multiple trips, by the end of which he's visibly out of breath.

Lastly, it's his very own water pipe making an appearance, which he arranges amidst comfortable ground seating mimics how his room used to look: in fact, most of the accoutrements here are his personal belongings.
As such, he knows just how to set everything to create an attractive, if minimalist, space for an afternoon's leisure.


II. Party?

It may not be an all-out bash like their excursion to the sandier shores of the Waking Sea some years ago, but this, if nothing else, is an opportunity for work on the Gallows to pause in palatable increments. One can be clearing rubble or cataloguing property for the morning, then pop over for an hour of sunbathing and a glass of wine; they're all within calling out distance of the courtyard, and the party likely bleeds into the day's work in a manner somewhat more comfortable than if it were sequestered.

That said: the early summer sea water is cold, the sun is out but meek behind occasional cloud cover, and the festivities are on clean-swept stone rather than sand. The view across the water is of mainland Kirkwall, and all that that entails.
But it's none of it so bad, for anyone looking to take a break. A few musicians even show up a bit later in the afternoon, and Benedict provides a bonfire in the center of the party space as the sun goes down.

Anything brought to share is met with effusive thanks from Benedict, who ensures its appropriate placement and distribution. He doesn't spend much time relaxing himself, instead making the rounds with the air of a fussy host, where he's quick to offer refills or alternatives in libations, or diversions for unsatisfactory activities.

[make your own starters, do your thing, go hog wild-- if you have logistical questions feel free to ask on plurk or discord]

Comments

[elegiaque]

“I did,” she says, instantly and without even a hint of shame. “I'm not a gentleman.”

The first time they'd met, Stephen Strange is an attractive man had been a fact she had catalogued about him, not dispassionate exactly but just: something that had not seemed relevant to her. A thing of which she had an awareness, but not something she'd imagined thinking at beyond the way she sort of always wonders what someone is like, romantically, in an almost— anthropological sense. She thinks about these things. She has theories. It's a function of meeting people, mostly,

so tall, dark and handsome had just been the sort of thing she observed, added to a list of other observations and weighted the same as things like sort of talks like a dwarf and takes correction fairly well, actually. It isn't as if most of the men and women she's spent the bulk of the past decade keeping company with haven't been shockingly attractive; there are a lot of people, even only in Riftwatch, who she has thought I can see it about and never anything else, anything more. Alexandrie is exquisite and it would simply never happen.

On that beach that didn't exist, she'd looked. She'd even imagined—

but she'd been conscious, then, of not wanting to jeopardise a friendship for the sake of something fleeting and physical. She'd known that she hadn't wanted the fleeting, physical thing she'd imagined it would be, and she'd been confident that she was finished with wanting more than that, too.

There are worse things she's been wrong about.

[portalling]

That little revelation completely tracks with everything he knows about Gwenaëlle Baudin, but it’s still a surprise—

So he laughs a startled laugh behind her, above her, and his knuckles dig into her shoulderblade. “Lech,” Stephen says, but it sounds warm and fond and not real censure. It’s all part and parcel of what he likes about her: the way she keeps knocking on the door of his comfort zone, needling him out of it, nudging him along. They’re both learning and changing.

“And— I think this might be enough on your back. Good enough for government work. I’m not straddling you in public, as interesting as that might sound.”

He rubs the last of the makeshift sunscreen into his own hands, wiping them off until they’re clean, and then withdraws to settle back down beside her again, seated with his legs stretched out on the rocky beach. And if it sounds a little like throwing in the towel and admitting defeat, well, it is; he knows when he’s about to be hopelessly outmaneuvered, and doesn’t trust himself with whatever card she might have played, or might yet play. She’s a hazard.

[elegiaque]

Good enough for government work surprises her into a laugh, rolling over and taking his little pot of cream, stretching her legs out, too. Probably this would be slightly more efficient if she sat up, but what she actually does is draw her knees up, straighten one leg and reach up to it to massage paste into her own warm skin. From most angles approaching them, this just looks incredibly lazy. From the specific angle that she's sprawled out beside him, it's slightly more confronting,

but she is wearing undergarments, so there's that.

“For the record,” she says, primly, “I prefer strumpet.”

[portalling]

So she says, and instantly proves the whole strumpet thing all over again with the provocative arch of her leg. Stephen shoots Gwenaëlle another look, implicitly communicating something along the lines of I know what you’re doing and I’m actually powerless to stop it so I’m just gonna have to sit here and suffer. Thanks.

There’s a recurring trait to the people he’s drawn to. It’s always the ones who push him, who challenge him, who don’t take his shit and leave him a little discombobulated —

“Someday we’ll get to have a little vacation on the beach in Rivain or the like,” he says, both warning and affectionate and perhaps a little wistful, “and we won’t be surrounded by our colleagues, and this will play out very differently.”

🎀

[elegiaque]

He suffers through the lazy application of paste to both of her legs, tugging her chemise up to get at the tops of her thighs and reaching underneath it to apply where she knows she's probably going to be exposed later, swimming—

and then she rolls up onto her knees, walking her hands over closer to him so she can press a kiss to the corner of his mouth in a way that would probably feel a lot more chaste under any other circumstances than these ones. From the thoughtful, sly expression on her face, she's holding him to that Rivain thing, but:

“I'll make it up to you later.”