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]

"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?"

[wickedwit]

"He's afraid he can't protect me. He's been afraid since ..." Claudius sighs. "Another bit of Christian nonsense. Since our first night, he's no longer blessed with God's strength and holy fire, and he can't fight on pure instinct as he once did. He's begun cultivating the sword path with Lan Wangji, but I thought ... I thought he would have more time. The mansion's never put me in danger without giving me some way out of it. It's egotistic to say, but I thought they wouldn't want me to die. Or any of us, really -- the mansion provides all the necessities for a long life, and some of us were brought here from the brink of death. I was, apparently, wrong. I believed we were songbirds in a protected cage, but we're live bait in a trap." Another sigh, this one deeper, filling his lungs in a way he can feel. "But even if he can't protect me, Galahad does take care of me. If he didn't ... I think he would be doing worse. Is that a selfish thing to think? He's a devoted man who deserves better than me, but somehow both of us need each other. I'd have given up moving otherwise."

[vineleaves]

Dionysus had hoped that none of them would die, just as Claudius apparently has. That maybe there was some chance that whatever powers the spirits had to bring people here from death would keep them from dying again. It's a similar feeling to the day he realized his children wouldn't inherit his immortality. That, as it turns out, there is limited time with everyone here. It's a feeling he is much more accustomed to now though than when Oenopion passed away.

"I'm glad you two have each other. Having a partner you love and can rely on helps. Even if he doesn't have --" what was it? Jesus fire? Something. "the abilities he used to have." Good save. Probably. "Most people don't have abilities like that, y'know. But that's what is so great about having loved ones. You're able to get through the rough times together. It's hard, and it can be pretty scary at times, but having people worth getting up out of bed for every day makes -- well, it makes everything easier."

[wickedwit]

Oh. Claudius laughs, and his voice breaks, as he realizes that's what he's afraid to lose. These people who make it worth getting out of bed for every day. "I've never had so many people I love in one place. Isn't that ridiculous? I tried very hard to stay ahead of that sort of thing. Whenever I suspected I'd grown too attached to someone, I'd go to a different country. Even Gertrude and I ... I kept praying for years not to be in love with her, going on diplomatic missions and hoping my heart would cool, before I realized God and politics weren't going to help with that one." He rubs at his face, aware when his eyes start to itch. "But still, I was able to outpace so many impossible love affairs. Someone like Galahad ... I would've known it was impossible. I wasn't going to marry some sweet young knight I flirted with at a guesthouse, so I would've broken things off before anyone got his heart broken. This is the only place something like that is possible. Where Laertes's marriage to Sagramore is possible, or where Aziraphale and Crowley can simply exist. Do you realize how important it is to me?""

[vineleaves]

Dionysus kisses Claudius's temple, then leans over to rest his head on Claudius's shoulder. "There have been far, far too many places and times that have tried to make it impossible for people like us to just exist, just to have happy lives full of love. If you knew how often people've tried to arrest me, or worse... I'm so glad for all of us that we don't have to worry about any of that here. That we're all getting to just be. It's -- I mean, it's different for me, I'm from the future where it's better than it used to be -- in some places, anyway." Plus he's a god, he never needed to be too worried for his personal safety. "But there's so many of you who wouldn't have had this chance otherwise. I'm just -- I'm so happy for all of you. It's not perfect here, but at least we can all cling to that, right?"

[wickedwit]

Claudius realizes what that itching in his eyes is -- they're trying to cry again. He laughs, and shuts his eyes tight. He wants to be here, even with the threat of tears, if he can listen a little longer to the words of a kind god who only wants humanity's happiness and freedom. A god who's fought that for that freedom, and nearly been arrested, for the same loving vices human beings commit.

Is this the strength from faith true believers experience? The words of the church, even in times of mourning, only reminded him of his weakness. Impious stubbornness, he thinks. A fault against the dead. To be this crushed and empty speaks only to his failure to accept the inevitability of death, to say with Job, Man's days are determined, the number of his months are with thee, thou hast appointed his bounds that he cannot pass. But Dionysus isn't that god who chooses when sparrows fall.

And anyway, Claudius thinks more wryly, Crowley and Aziraphale stepped in with Job, and Job and his family were all happier for it. He takes another long drink of the kykeon. Like a child, he asks, "Thou wilt not leave me?"

[vineleaves]

Dionysus isn’t sure if Claudius is asking if he’ll leave him physically right now, or if he means in more of a metaphorical sense, but the answer is the same for both.

“Of course I won’t leave you,” he responds softly, holding him close, his own weight adding to that of the blanket. “I’m here as long as you want me. I’m stubborn like that.”

[wickedwit]

Claudius breathes in slow. He breathes out slow. Cotton seeds, drifting. "The universe is a lonely place. I think often, know'st thou, of the monologue you prepared for me. Our world is arduous. Such need, such desperation." Breathe in, breathe out. "Thou wilt not leave me."

[vineleaves]

"I won't leave you," he repeats, and starts to lightly rock Claudius back and forth. The gods Shen Teh had to deal with in Good Person of Szechwan couldn't say that. They left, repeatedly, multiple times, but especially notably right after she gave that monologue.

"Part of the problem for Shen Teh is that she tried to bear every burden alone. Granted, the script was written in such a way that it would have made it difficult for her to find someone who could help her out," Wang the Water-Seller is really the best option she could have had, and, you know. Plot devices to keep the two from actually talking much, or whatever. "But we don't have to worry about that. Especially not here. It's hard right now, but we've got such a sweet little community of people. None of us have to bear anything alone. You don't need to invent a Shui Ta to get through this, Claudius, you can just be Claudius."

[wickedwit]

"I have a name here," Claudius says, working aimlessly through his thoughts, lulled by the rhythm of Dionysus's rocking. "It was a rare thing, in Elsinore, to be called by my name. My brother called me a beast and a serpent. Courtiers called me prince, or your highness. Sometimes they talked around me, like an untoward secret, without calling me anything at all. I had to learn to read between the lines." Between the lines was the only place he felt allowed to exist.

[vineleaves]

"I know," he says softly. It's not too difficult to extrapolate from Hamlet that people - even before the curtain rises - hardly ever referred to Claudius by name. "I, for one, am so happy that I get to meet you as Claudius. That you get to be yourself here."

Yeah, when they first met, it was a little bit like meeting a celebrity. He got to meet King Claudius, how special is that? But the actual special thing about this place is that he can get to know just Claudius. Who he is, separated from who Will wanted him to be. That's the person Dionysus cares about, not just a character in a play he already knows.

[wickedwit]

Claudius chokes back a sob. Oh, he thinks. There it is. The tonic Dionysus gave me must be taking effect. It feels awful but only because everything is awful. His body feels tired. His eyes feel wet. His heart feels utterly empty, and yet crushed with pain. "I don't want to lose what we have here," he says. It feels so frustratingly petty and small. "I love this place. I love the astonishing variety of people who come through here. I love ..." He almost laughs. "I love listening to someone badly explain one of their celebrations, the same way I loved to walk through cities where I only half knew the language, and learned it as I went. But what if I was only ever meant to live out a tragedy?"

[vineleaves]

Dionysus thinks of so many prophecies that came true regardless of what people thought would set them free. Laius believing he would not be killed, because he was certain his child had been abandoned to die, then later that same child believing he would not fulfil his side of the prophecy because he left Corinth. That's the whole point of a prophecy. They're going to come true.

But a play is not a prophecy. And even if it were, Dionysus is pretty sure Laius would have lived if Oedipus had been teleported to the mansion. That's clearly something that neither him nor Apollo can foresee, as evidenced by the fact that they were both taken by surprise at arriving here.

"I think you're here so that you don't live out a tragedy," he says, with full confidence. "The same way Étienne and Mercutio are here to be saved from death, the same way my brother is here to escape our father, the same way I'm here to give you monologues to learn and to make sure everyone had enough vitamins to make it through the winter."

He boops Claudius's nose, you know, for old time's sake.

"I'm not going to pretend I understand everything that's going on with this place. Anything that's powerful enough to keep me trapped -- not to mention Apollo -- that's weird. But I can't imagine they'd want to bring us all here if the plan was to have us live the same kinds of lives we all had to deal with before. If that were the case why even bring us to start with?"

[wickedwit]

It's a true, in a way Claudius can't deny. He works through a sleepy logic of it, nestling against Dionysus's shoulder, "If the spirits truly chose us from stories they loved, they could easily read the same stories over and over. They wanted new entertainment. Something different. I suppose for someone with a tragic fate, anything different would be better." A little sulkily, as though to concede in some imagined debate with the mansion's spirit, he says, "I am glad Étienne is here. I'm rather hopelessly in love with him, and it grieves me to think he might have died so young. And Mercutio is a feckless bear-baiter of a young man, but I like him. I'm teaching him alchemical reactions, and he's going to bring me back gossip from his flirtations." All future things. Things that aren't the chasm of his own hopelessness stretching on and on, forever. He can almost touch the other side.

[vineleaves]

"Oh, I didn't show you when we came in," he says, as if they hadn't been dealing with Crisis Mode when they first entered Dionysus' room, "Étienne painted that for me." He points up to Ariadne's constellation on the ceiling. "Actually, I suppose you might have heard about it already, your sweet Galahad gave him the idea. They knew how much I was missing my wife's stars and took matters into their own hands to make things better for me." A sigh, then he adds quietly, "...I love him so much."

Étienne, not Galahad. Obviously.

"Whatever the downsides to this place are, we can work together to make it better. To make it bearable for each other. More than bearable. You're getting married, for goodness sake. There is so much happiness to go around."

[wickedwit]

There's an aching, in the emptiness of Claudius's chest -- the emptiness Claudius created by vacating his body, but it must not have worked, because there's something there that can be hurt. He tries to grasp it, tries to imagine the wedding day, but after the loss of Shen Yuan nothing is certain. "How canst thou bear it?" He asks, looking up at the stars of the ceiling, put there by two men he loves for the god he adores. "How canst thou bear all the losses thou hast had?" Is he looking at the answer, while looking at those stars? He finds he can't look away. That aching in his chest starts to feel like bitter hope.

[vineleaves]

"It's hard," he answers truthfully. "Sometimes I'll be going about my day, and something someone says, or the way the light hits their hair, or a look they give, or just -- well, anything, really. It'll remind me of Ariadne, or one of my children, or Ampelos, or any number of friends. But those are the moments when I get to remember them, too. I wouldn't trade my happy memories for anything in the world."

One hand travels down to Claudius's chest, to rest above his heart. "Grief means you had someone worth missing. To block it out entirely is to deny yourself the chance to remember the good, too."

[wickedwit]

"Wilt thou remember the good of me?" he asks, soft. He'd accepted the likelihood that he'd died before his first and closest friends, sometimes driven by the fear that a mortal life wasn't enough to do any significant good for them in. Now Shen Yuan the immortal has died, and he can't trust the likelihood of anything. He can trust, right now, in the fact Dionysus's hand on his heart. In the stars and the memories that Dionysus still carries.

[vineleaves]

“Oh, darling,” Dionysus gives Claudius a kiss. “The gods themselves couldn’t make me forget all the good in you.” It would sound like hyperbole if he wasn’t himself also a god.

[wickedwit]

"Imagine the parable," Claudius says, a flicker of brightness in his eyes, the fleeting shine of a smile at the end of a kiss. "The villain of a celebrated tragedy meets the god of theater, who promises always to remember the good in him. I could worship no god but thee, know'st thou."