bakerstreet | Dinner's ready

Dinner's ready

Strange to see how a good dinner and feasting reconciles everybody.
- Samuel Pepys

Fancy Dinner Party Meme

WHAT TO DO:

1. Post with your character--name, fandom and any particular preferences go in the subject line as usual.

2. You can either roll or pick a scenario (or scenarios!) from the list or leave your comment blank. If you want to be really fancy, link to what extravagant formal outfit your character’s wearing to this occasion.

3. Reply to people!

4. Have fun and be mindful of your partner's preferences.

OPTIONS:

1. Hosting: This is your dinner party, and you’re panicking, trying to make sure absolutely everything is going smoothly. Time to conscript one of your guests to help out!

2. Sitting with a Stranger: You’ve been seated beside someone you’ve never met, but this meal’s going to be incredibly awkward if you just don’t say anything to them the whole time. Make introductions--why are each of you here at the party?

3. Bad Manners: One or both of you really doesn’t belong in this posh setting. You’re making a mockery of the refined setting with your table manners, your clothing and your overall demeanor.

4. What Is That?: There’s a food in front of you on the platter--at least, you’re pretty sure it’s food and not a centerpiece. Beyond that, you have no clue exactly what it is. Do you dare to try it?

4.5 No, Really, WHAT Is That?!: You’re at the sort of amazing dinner party that Hannibal Lecter throws--the wine’s just a little too red, the meat’s nice and fatty, and you’ve just realized that this salad dressing might be made with Soylent Green.

5. Dancing: You’re not just at a banquet, you’re at a ball. It’s time to convince the partner of your choice to take a spin on the dance floor. Do you even know how to waltz, bro?

6. Intrigue: One or both of you are undercover, secretly armed to the teeth under your formal attire. How do you keep this a secret? ~~How does the other person find out?~~ (This option is also totally great for superheroes attending the party in their mundane identity!)

7. Poison: Midway through one of the courses, someone on the other end of the table turns purple and passes out (or possibly even passes away!) at the table. It looks like they’ve been poisoned, and you have a mystery on your hands. What do?

8. Dessert: After a delicious meal, there’s something truly decadent being put on the table. Does this make up for the tiny portions of the previous courses? Do you tease your partner with the chocolate-covered strawberries, or share a spoonful of tiramisu?

9. Wildcard!: I know I forgot something, probably several somethings, so here's your wildcard for whatever else you can fit into this meme.

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(prefer something with intrigue. she won't very much like having to attend, but she picked a nice gown.)

Edited 2023-11-22 23:27 (UTC)

[Due to status as a part of Paradeisos in her canon, what would be considered the upper echelon that regulates & 'protects' society: Dancing, Intrigue, and/or Poison would be good prompts to roll with for her.]

[Since Garma's basically space royalty, he'd probably be best suited for dancing, intrigue, or poison.]

Luka is elegantly, even obtusely dressed for the occasion. His suit is immaculate black silk, he has a crème colored waistcoats, a prim while collar and a cameo necklace on a green ribbon at the hollow of his throat. His hair is densely and precisely braided, he wears mother of pearl buttons, a shining chain and pocket watch.

Big man that he is, he drinks plenty of wine but when dinner is set out his place is left empty, and he smiles neatly at the blankness of the place setting.

Across from him, Dorian-- well, at this table they refuse to call him Dorian and keep calling him "Smythe Wallace" or if he's lucky someone is feeling particularly casual "Hamish"-- is slowly drowning in the wine. Every now and then he'll lob a bon-mot into the fray to see if it lands but it's clear he's used to very different sorts of parties. Sure, he was born into this world of incredibly specific forks and cut crystal but he's since lost his knack for commanding this particular sort of dinner table.

He's also quite convinced that Luka is the only interesting person here but there's some dithering debutant they've sat next to Luka and Dorian can't get a word in edgewise.

The girl at his elbow speaks in a pitch that stings Luka’s ears and, he’s certain, must scare the life out of her estate’s dogs. She’s taken to him already, him being mannerly, handsome and unusual. In the two hours of their acquaintance she hasn’t shut up once, and in the clatter and shine of other people at their feed Luka finds his eyes returning again and again to the shivering cords of her throat.

Five minutes ago, somewhere in there, she asked why he hasn’t been served anything. Now she’s on about her cousin’s diet, and how strange it is, and don’t you find it just the oddest thing when someone hasn’t an appetite? She realizes who she’s saying this to, and laughs at a volume that can’t hope to be self-effacing.

Luka lets out a droll, even dour, breath meant to sound like a laugh. He looks across at Dorian while the girl laughs and mouths to him.

‘Dear god help me.’

He reaches into his pocket and takes out a flask, tipping it into his empty water glass. Taking this and his wine glass, he poured one then the other down his throat and cast a look across to Dorian. His eyes were dark and dreamy, getting drunk fast.

Dorian does feel for the girl (some cousin or another on his father's side) somewhat, at her age he imagines her mother keeps her on a very short leash, a prized mare that must be managed until the reins can be passed to a suitable husband. Luka must be a refreshing break from the monotony of her life. But she does seem... painfully unaware of her own shrillness and prattle.

He holds Luka's gaze across the table for a long moment, arrested by the liquid gold of his eyes, his dreamy and intoxicated expression.

He gets to his feet.

"Hamish!" Somebody says down the long table.

"I'm sorry Aunt Augusta but I am absolutely gasping for a cigarette. I must go out for a moment. Would anyone like to join me?"

He knows nobody else will. None of the men at this party smoke cigarettes and all of them prefer to wait for the appointed hour set aside for brandy and cards and fat cigars away from the company of the ladies. Like gentleman. But Dorian isn't a gentleman, he's an artist and he'll embarrass himself to try and get them both some air. The other guests all mutter their disapproval though somebody at least points out that he's stopped lighting up in mixed company "like that wretched playwright" and gestures for him to go. Dorian glances at Luka. Luka is an artist too, in his way, would he also like to excuse himself to indulge in this most bohemian of vices?

“That sounds just the thing.”

Luka stands, nodding along at Dorian. Though the company has made their opinion of Dorian’s habits known, there’s a rumble of mixed, confused approval for Luka. The strange, handsome gentleman from somewhere far away can do what he likes, as long as the ladies don’t object. Thus the empty place setting. Thus, though eyes are batted and the girl beside him breaks off with a nonplussed warble, he plucks his wine glass from the table and carries it away with him.

Behind them ladies chirp quickly to each other, gentlemen grunt into their forks about the unusual varieties of what passes for a man these days.

Luka takes out his cigarette case as they leave the dining room, already shaking his head. He juggles it and his glass, long fingers making a concerted effort to keep the glass steady and finagle out a Sharbonie. The procedure is successful but a little inelegant. He holds the open case out to Dorian, cigarette pinned between his first and middle finger.

He shakes his head and sighs.

“I should like to see your cousin very much, but only after I’ve been struck deaf by your aunt’s guffaw.”

"Conspire to be sat closer to Aunt Augusta and you will very soon get your wish." Dorian says, with a wry smile as he accepts the cigarette. In kind, he produces his matches and lights first his cigarette and then leans over to light Luka's.

"I am dreadfully sorry. She does so like to have artistic types at her dinners, but only to gawk at, never to make conversation." He says, steering Luka out towards the back garden, a long lawn of meticulously trimmed boxwoods and an uninspiring fountain.

Luka touches Dorian’s wrist, his thumb tucking into the palm of Dorian’s hand as he leans down for a light. Snapping his case shut and sighing out a plume of smoke, he inclines he’s head and walks languidly along beside Dorian.

“She is hardly the first to do so. Even our fellow curios will make a party full of minds and hands, only to sit and pontificate for ears alone.” He takes in a deep breath of night at and stands looking at the neatly trimmed garden, the obligatory imported Italian fountain. His cigarette glows and cools on his lip. “The wine is almost worth it. But there’s so much of it pouring into red faces, I can’t help a certain distraction. Your cousin does not help, either.”

Dorian seems untroubled by the touch, as if he's used to the oddly intimate gestures of lighting another man's cigarette.

"I'm sorry, darling, some of us are poets and it's simply in our nature to pontificate." He says, more breezily than he feels. He's always so wrong-footed at family gatherings.

He listens to the pristine white gravel of the path crunch under their dress shoes as they wander into the garden.

"You must forgive Violet. I don't think she talks to anyone who isn't my aunt, most days."

Luka, usually the apple of mamas', aunties' and cousins' eyes, only tends to have trouble with family gatherings in the case that there's no one he can stand talking to. It was touch and go there with Violet, but now Luka finds himself much more at his ease.

"A poet may pontificate as they please, I would even recommend Violet spend some time listening to one. It would help her invariably to understand just how,"

He pauses, rolling his neck slowly and blowing smoke over the darkening gardens.

"A little air in the conversation can be a blessing. You must tell me, Dorian, what do they know of you? Your art? Are you another of auntie's baubles or do they let you actually create, from time to time?"

"Well, you may have noticed that they don't call me Dorian, for starters." He says ruefully. "That's alright though. It's better that they only know Hamish Smythe Wallace and not Dorian Pearl. It would likely scandalize and frighten them, to know Dorian." He exhales a heavy stream of smoke into the dark. "Truly I'm only here to stay in Father's family's good graces now that he's gone. My lifestyle elsewhere requires it." There's a mercenary edge to his otherwise dreamy smile, handed down from an American mother whose hand and vast industrial fortunes had been sold to an English baronet in marriage. "So I'm not even really one of her baubles. Just family baggage."

"I was wondering, after all you seem a little more wan and waifish than, say, Hamish." Struck by inspirations lightning bolt and shining with his own cleverness, Luka grins and his teeth stand out bright white in the dark of his face, the night. He thumps Dorian on the back, not a bit worried that he may not be the person his family assumes he is but instead focused on the fact that they have found themselves, whoever they were, here now. "So you're here on behalf of a ghost, wearing someone else's name and being lugged to and fro by your aunt. That's about as much as one can reasonable expect from such a family."

"Oof." Smoke puffs from Dorian's lungs as Luka thumps him on the back. "D-Dorian's my professional name. Since they do not believe poet to be a profession, they see no reason to use it." He coughs. "But it feels more like my name than Hamish ever did."

He thanks God that his father's ghost is purely metaphorical. Unlike his other ghosts, he thinks, scuttling away from the fountain lest he see Isola peering at him from within it.

Luka keeps a hand on his back, at the base of his neck, and feels Dorian scuttling but doesn't at once connect it to anything more than a loose understanding that this man is a magnet for misfortune. As for the name, it's a neat and tidy reasoning to be sure, but it makes as much difference to Luka as it would had Dorian been wearing Hamish's skin and bilking his bereaved family.

They come into a long, green and black stretch of boxwoods. The soft cold breeze is quieted here, the air smells like cut grass, wet leaves and a hint of frost.

"And no poems for Papa and Auntie?" Luka says, the thought only now occurring to him. "Though, I suppose if they already consider them trifles it would be better not to waste the effort."

Luka's hand remains on his neck and Dorian doesn't duck away or discourage him. It's more familiar than the rigid atmosphere up at the house. Down here in the shadows, everything is permitted.

"No, I would not waste good poetry on my family." He says, ruefully. "But you should come and see me sometime. I promise you I throw a much better dinner party. And perhaps you might even hear some of my poems. I'll be in London until the end of the month and then I'm going back to Paris. I would be happy to host you in either place."

"I'm often on the continent," Luka nods, his mind drifting somewhere else. "I'd be happy to join you here and there. Paris is a special love of mine, even with all the Catholics shot through every inch."

Dorian can tell his friend moves better here in the dark. The near-military stiffness and affected stuffiness of his manner in the world of the living has its uses, but like Dorian Luka is more himself in the dark. As they walk he disappears inch by inch into the growing gloom, his eyes and the occasional flash of teeth the only signs of his presence despite his considerable size.

"Tell me, Dorian Pearl Smythe Wallace," Luka's tongue bounces off the unfamiliar name in a tone that's purely theatrical, making a joke for Dorian's benefit. "Would you mind terribly if I had a drink of cousin Violet? I'm sure her mother would love the excuse of her girl taking to her bed for a few days. It would give the beaus of the neighborhood something to come and fawn over."

"What?" Dorian asks, blinking at his companion (what he can see of him anyway). He doesn't quite understand and he frowns. "I would not chance any kind of dalliance with Violet. Lest you find yourself on Augusta's bad side. I'm pretty sure she's saving the girl for an American oil baron." He makes a face.

“Oh, no, I wouldn’t be joining her in bed. She’s much too young for me.” Luka does not elaborate further. Haunted thing that he is, Dorian is still a friend. A friend that doesn’t need to know more about Luka’s designs on his cousin. “I just happen to be a bit hungry. Smelling all that food only put off my appetite for a little while, you know. It’s not easy seeing everyone at their mess and being unable to join in.”

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