happy pride, etc

[papadopoulos]

“Uh, people were killed.”
“No one was killed at Stonewall.”
“No…body…was killed???”
_________________________________________________________

The café is looking much more colorful than it has in the past. Specifically, there are various flags draped on top of the walls – certainly it is much brighter than anything Enjolras would have cared to come up with. Directly behind the pastry case there is a rainbow flag, and scattered around there are a myriad of other pride flags. (Whatever they could scrounge up from the cupboards, basically.) There is also a small table set off to one side, with various types of beaded necklaces and colored bracelets lying atop it. There is also a small flier with descriptions and explanations of what the different flags represent. Explanations of pride in general will be freely offered, as well.

Dionysus has offered up his cd player, though instead of the same music from the party, it is playing songs from various queer artists. There’s a selection ranging from Bowie to Cole Porter to Billie Holiday, including more modern artists such as Lady Gaga, Mika, Queen, and Green Day. Apollo can be found near the music as usual; but he is currently engrossed in making more of the colored bracelets. He is seated at the table with a box full of friendship bracelet making supplies, wearing an artfully cropped version of this shirt, a hyacinth bloom set behind his ear. Dionysus is at a different table, wearing a knee-length sundress of pink, yellow, and blue stripes and one of the beaded bracelets Apollo is making, this one in yellow, white, purple, and black beads. He found a small facepainting palette with a few pride flag options and is willing to offer up his services if anyone happens to want a tiny flag on their cheek (or, well, wherever.)


Let us know if you want Apollo, Dionysus, or both for your threads!

Comments

[wickedwit]

It gives Claudius more questions to ask, at least. "So it was a revolt?" he asks, imagining the sort of uneasy riots that break out among the serfdom when the local lords are cruel or incompetent. Nobles would petition the crown for assistance, he remembers, and they would always receive it. King Hamlet could never resist a show of force to put someone in their place.

[vineleaves]

"Basically. Lots of bricks being thrown, that sort of thing." He wasn't actually in America that year, but he of course heard about it. Obviously. "It wasn't one of the easier times and places to live in, for anyone like us. They were tired of it."

[wickedwit]

“Like us?”

[vineleaves]

"Yeah! Y'know, we're not straight. That, and then I'm not even a man even though people like to expect me to be."

[wickedwit]

He discussed this with Kade, and — Shen Yuan. They never continued that argument, about how common straight men were between worlds. Idly, as though it can’t hurt him, Claudius takes the thought and turns it around. He could’ve asked the other residents, compared their opinions, refined an argument and come back to Shen Yuan with it. Would Shen Yuan have enjoyed that? Would that have been better than bickering over things that never changed?

It still burns like a hot coal. He would’ve died all the same. All friends die. It’s the common theme that cries, from the the first corpse till to-day, ‘this must be so.'

He’s been silent too long again. He clears his throat. “Neither am I, I think,” he says. “I’ve been told the word is queer.”

[vineleaves]

Dionysus slowly starts to catch it, that maybe there's something going on with Claudius, that he isn't just thinking over what they're talking about. "Yeah, that's a common word in modern times for this, I just wasn't sure if you'd heard it yet." A pause, and then, "Are you doing alright, dear?"

[wickedwit]

That's harder to deflect. How are you is a nicety, easy to answer without giving anything away -- are you doing alright is specific. He can't elude it without ignoring it, at least in part. "I'm listening," he says, prompt, and hopes that comes close enough. "It was a coalition of interests, then? Those can be difficult to maintain among disparate groups of people." Like the mansion itself. Perhaps he would've never understood Shen Yuan's strange relationship to his identity, but he would've liked to have tried. "I suppose the celebration creates a sense of unity. What are the flags?" It's the natural next question, when speaking of nations and coalitions.

[vineleaves]

It still feels off, but he’ll continue explaining anyway.

“Right! Well, the flags represent different identities people might feel align with themselves. There’s quite a big umbrella, and if everyone who might fit under it is just called “gay” or “queer” it can sometimes feel a little, y’know, isolating, if your specific experience is different from how you’re seeing everyone else. Someone might be attracted to every gender, including what most would consider the “opposite”. But if in their mind “queer” is just men attracted to men only and women attracted to women only, they might assume they don’t fit in. But then they learn the terms pansexual and bisexual and realize no, nevermind, there are people like them as well. Or maybe someone is asexual, a lot of my friends who are ace have talked about that specific struggle too, of feeling like they don’t fit in anywhere, until they learn of the community. Uh, that’s— that’s when you’re not sexually attracted to anyone, not “asexual” in the scientific sense of reproducing by yourself.” Claudius is pretty scientifically minded, Dionysus thinks he might need that clarification if this is the first time he’s hearing the term.

“And then there’s the whole consideration of personal gender. Lots of different flags in that realm as well. But even though there’s all the different specific identities, it’s still important to work together to try and fight back, you know?”

[wickedwit]

"Is it?" This time, the response comes too quick. He might've considered it more.

[vineleaves]

Yeah, no, there's definitely something wrong.

"You know, if something's up, you can talk to me, right?"

[wickedwit]

Claudius shakes his head. At what, he couldn't say. "I don't mean to sound cynical. First you seek common ground, then you acknowledge differences ... those are the first steps of any negotiation. It's essential to do both. But matters of love, attraction, and identity are rather personal and volatile. In Elsinore, sounding out someone's interests is like handling quicksilver, and as dangerous. Even here, I've fallen out with a young man for whom admitting his attraction to other men was so frightening he suspected me of seducing him as part of a conspiracy to undermine his power, and lashed out at the first opportunity. I simply wonder what it would take to establish a community among such people. Whether abstract notions of working together and fighting back against a shared threat would be enough. I don't believe it would. Too many people are selfish, given to secrecy, and care only about the safety of their immediate circle." It's why Claudius hasn't done anything, why there's nothing to do. Friends die. The idea that the mansion is a community, a community that would work together to protect its own, seems quite impossible now. Too late.

[vineleaves]

"Not everyone is always going to want to, ah, come to the party, so to say. There's different reasons for that. Some better than others. There's times when it is absolutely safer, or more comfortable, for someone to keep their true self quiet. But that's -- that's why it's important for everyone who can come together to do exactly that. Especially when it's dangerous, when it's a matter of life or death. Sitting around passively and being complacent doesn't solve anything, it allows things to get worse. If people are going to lump a bunch of us all together in an attempt to subjugate us, then it's up to us to come together, even if we don't all fit together perfectly, and actually try to do something about it."

He doesn't sound angry, because he isn't angry (at Claudius, anyway), but he definitely sounds passionate, and it might be easier than normal to see why he was given the name Liberator. "Sometimes the best way to protect the safety of your immediate circle is to stand together with everyone else going through the same shit."

He's thinking about centuries and centuries worth of friends who couldn't live how they wanted, who couldn't be with who they wanted, who were forced into a life that brought them no joy, just because someone somewhere decided to pass shitty laws that allow misery and hatred to be the accepted way of things.

[wickedwit]

Claudius doesn't feel the first tear but then, he feels very little. It's not until he opens his mouth to speak that the salt-taste takes him by surprise. (Absently, he remembers reading that tears flush out the chemicals the body no longer needs. Compared to blood or bile, shedding tears may be the only form of fluid-letting that works.) "Ah," he says, as the words he'd meant to say leave him.

[vineleaves]

Dionysus immediately wraps his arms around Claudius, thankful that he and Claudius are of a similar height so that the hug will envelop more of him, and he hugs tight.

"Claudius," he says, almost pleading, "you can talk to me. That's what I'm here for. What's wrong?"

[wickedwit]

“All my life,” Claudius murmurs, “I’ve wanted to live in a peaceful place. Even before I knew war, even before I’d seen men die in one. I wasn’t at peace. Violence could erupt at any moment, and I would have to weather it, because there was no escape from it, and no one would protect me. But I believed I could bear it. If every court, every community, has a sacrificial lamb to bear the punishment for everyone’s sins, I could be that lamb. But I couldn’t control even that. Because I couldn’t control my own feelings, because I couldn’t hide them, she hurt her, and she hid it from me. I never knew until it was too late. I’ve learned to look everywhere for dangers I might otherwise miss, and still — I didn’t know until it was too late.”

He can imagine the stark, black lines in his trauma workbook, the ones he didn’t want to fill in because it felt like confession. What triggers you or causes you to react strongly? What feelings come up when you are triggered? His voice is even. He doesn’t look Dionysus in the eye, but over his shoulder. But even detached like this, he stays in the hug. Despite everything, he wants it to make him feel something.

[vineleaves]

"Look at me," he says, turning Claudius's head so their eyes can meet. "Nobody's going to punish you, especially not for 'everyone else's sins'." Whatever the fuck that means. Christianity is so frustrating. "I'm here, okay? I've got you. You're standing in this room with me, and I'm not going to let anything happen to you, alright?"

They need to sit down, they need to talk. Dionysus is incredibly aware of the fact that Apollo is sitting maybe a yard away, and that literally anyone could walk in at any given moment. He doesn't think Claudius would appreciate that.

"Do you want to sit in here? My room's just a few doors away too if you would like that better."

[wickedwit]

Claudius nods. It's all he can do, and even that feels like effort, like dredging something up from the depths.

[vineleaves]

Dionysus kisses Claudius' forehead then spares a quick, wordless glance to Apollo before leading Claudius out and to his room. He quickly arranges a bunch of cushions for them to sit on (maybe he should think about getting a sofa one of these days, he wonders), and he grabs one of the remaining weighted blankets as well. Once they are settled and the blanket is firmly wrapped around Claudius -- with Dionysus's arms around him as well -- he says, "You're safe, my darling. Nothing bad's going to happen in here, I won't let it."

[wickedwit]

"Someone has died," he says, soft. He looks so small wrapped in the blanket, so small and young for all his years.

[vineleaves]

Well that -- yep, that would explain a few things. His arms tighten around Claudius.

"Who?"

[wickedwit]

An easy question, at least. Not how he feels, but stark facts. "Shen Yuan. Shen Yuan has died."

[vineleaves]

"I'm so sorry, dear." He starts rubbing a hand up and down Claudius' back, though given that he is wrapped in a weighted blanket he may not be able to feel it that much. "What happened?"

[wickedwit]

"Shen Yuan was an immortal cultivator, or at least he'd inhabited the body of one. It wasn't a natural death." The blanket's a welcome weight. "That's all I know."

[vineleaves]

That's... concerning. Genuinely concerning. It would be wrong to say he was hoping that it had been some kind of fatal accident or some other random happenstance, because hoping for a specific cause of death just seems wrong, but he definitely was not expecting an implication that it was some kind of -- of what? An unnatural death. Was it the mansion spirits? If they can trap a god here they might also have the ability to kill someone otherwise immortal.

He doesn't have time to worry about that right now. Getting Claudius stable is his main priority.

"I take it you were close with him?" It almost feels like a sense of deja vu¹. How many times in his life has he needed to console someone, because the Fates decided their friend's allotment was up long before anyone else expected it to be? There's different ways people handle things, of course, but this is a role Dionysus seems to have found himself typecast as, over the millennia.


1. Deja vu, or maybe just the mansion being wibbly wobbly timey wimey...

[wickedwit]

If Claudius could laugh, he would. "Far from it. He led me to believe I was dying once, then suggested I deserved it, if I couldn't humble myself and beg for mercy. He apologized later -- when a truth spell compelled me to admit it still stung. But there were obstacles to us becoming friends. A jealous, unreasonable lover who wouldn't let him out of sight at parties. The same one who accused me of conspiracy, who I was supposed to beg for mercy." Even if his tone is flat, the words at least take the familiar shape of storytelling, the absurd and terrifying events of his life retold as thrilling gossip. Right now there's no thrill, only the frank recognition that he was never truly safe. Violence came to him early. It must be attracted to him, Claudius thinks, like flies to a carrion flower.

"I would've liked to have known Shen Yuan better," he says. "He had a fascinating mind."