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

[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."

[vineleaves]

"A loss of opportunity still stings," Dionysus says. The regret of not having made time for something. How often has Dionysus found out about the death of an acquaintance only to be torn that he never made the time to get to know them better?

"I only met him once, at the party."

[wickedwit]

Claudius's mind, it seems, wants to play memories -- he watches them go by, without getting caught up in them. The procession at his father's funeral, the stone faces of the soldiers who acted as pallbearers, the coffin draped in a banner of crowned lions and lake-leaves. He should have felt something. He should feel something, standing on the other side of memory, looking in as into a glass, darkly. But there's nothing, nothing. A pretty piece of cloth to cover the emptiness. "I told him," he says, "at the next event, I'd ignore Luo Binghe altogether. I'd ask him to dance, even if Luo Binghe glowered." He didn't ask. He took one look at the couple, arriving together and late as always, and realized he didn't care enough to come between them. Let them have their night, he thought; there would be others.

There were no other nights. He should have asked at the first dance, should have insisted and let Luo Binghe simmer, because holding back from fear back has only ever cost Claudius. He shouldn't have had to fear.

But none of it matters, because, "I'm sure he would have refused."

[vineleaves]

Whatever the reason, Claudius is clearly taking all of this rather poorly. Not that he shouldn't -- death is death, it's a big fucking deal, but Dionysus needs to help him through it.

"I'm going to make you something," he says, and magics up a kylix of kykeon. Not the psychoactive kind everyone used to use back in all of Demeter's celebrations, it's not needed right now. There's a real death to deal with, not a hypothetical, religious "death" that people dealt with by getting super drugged up.

This kykeon is still very strong, in an alcoholic sort of way, due to the pramnian wine serving as its base. But that's sort of the point, to serve as a way to kickstart Claudius's emotions back into gear so he can hopefully stop looking so incredibly, painfully numb.

"It doesn't taste good," it doesn't look like it would -- a dark, almost blackish purple color, and thick like a smoothie, due to the cheese and oats inside, "but would you drink it? For me?"

[wickedwit]

"You sound like Gertrude," Claudius says -- a statement that would ordinarily make him smile. As he gazes down into the dark drink, his face doesn't change. He twirls the glass, from habit, and the sludge fails to swirl. "Whenever her son Hamlet was ill. He was often ill as a child, like I was." We should've both died in our cribs, he thinks. But he swallows his medicine all the same. The texture's no worse than posset curds with cocksparrow bones to rouse the sanguine humors, the wine no more bitter than wormwood beer for fever and for choler. Only the salt-taste of cheese surprises him, and it's a distant, dull surprise.

[vineleaves]

"This is going to be a weird question, but -- humor me. Can you describe to me how it feels as you're drinking it? And how it tastes?" Get him recognizing the here and now, the physical sensations he's feeling but -- from the looks of it -- blocking out. Get him back in his body, more or less.

[wickedwit]

“It feels like an over-curdled posset,” Claudius says, since the comparison is close to hand. “Coarse-grained and congealing. Some parts are smoother than others. The taste …” He runs his tongue over his teeth. "Is not unlike the froth of some men. Bitter, salty, strangely sweet."

[vineleaves]

He raises an eyebrow at that ...comparison. "If kykeon came outta someone, I'd have some concerns." Let's all collectively ignore the fact that it did, sort of, just come out of Dionysus. Or from him, anyway. That's different.

"I know it's not great, but I'm glad you're drinking it. It'll help. Do you like the blanket? Doesn't it feel nice and heavy?"

[wickedwit]

"It does," Claudius admits, as though it pains him to admit. His voice has been so flat, that slight grudging tone stands out starkly. "Galahad would like one, I think. We've a table fringed with a heated blanket, but nothing this heavy and ... comforting." It feels childish to say it, that the soft shelter of a blanket and the weight against his back can be comforting. If he were a child (for the third time) he'd want to pull it over his head and make the world disappear.

[vineleaves]

"Oh, please take one. Take two. I have too many." He's still got, like, six of these things. "They're great for napping underneath." Or if you're ever so stressed out you feel detached from your body and need a heavy weight to be able to connect back to it. Multi-purpose, really.

"How is Galahad handling everything?"