vineleaves | Open: In a shout of joy at the only shrine where you come benighted and leave benign

Dark has come and gone again, which means it’s time to party.

In some ways the party is very similar to last year’s - same large banquet room in the mansion, a similarly large abundance of food and drink, and the promise of a night full of letting loose for everyone in attendance. It’s far from a direct clone of the previous party though. For starters, Dionysus has had Claudius help him in all of the planning (sometimes a god’s blessings come in the form of enrichment for one’s enclosure). They’ve gotten several of the mansion’s residents to agree to play live music during the night, and Dionysus was able to find some, ah, more widely appreciated CDs to play during the breaks between performers.

The room has been decorated to the nines again, but where last year he had green vines draping on the walls diffusing the glow from the twinkling fairy lights, this year he has strung up swooping vines of silver, glittering almost like tinsel. The large food tables have an almost ridiculous amount of things to munch on; there should be something for everyone there.

It should go without saying that the beverage tables are well-stocked, considering the host.

The festivities are starting a little earlier this year than last, out of respect for those who may or may not have earlier bedtimes. Come dressed in your finest, it’s a yearly tradition now!

Just as there was last year, there is to be an ‘after party’. If your character is part of the standard Orgy Invite Crew, they will have received another invitation to that half of the evening as well. Just like last year, this part of the event is to be handwaved, for obvious reasons.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

As the dance evolves, Susan, too, grows bolder. When she whirls out, she introduces some of the moves Bacchus has taught her, the isolated hip movements and belly tensions that make it look like her entire body is rolling. It's difficult to see some of the effects in this gown, but enough is clear enough for it to still have impact. If, when she twists back into the hold, she stands closer than the dance strictly requires, then surely it's something she can shrug off as more for Lancelot's eventual reaction than Laertes's.

Lancelot has just entered and gotten a glass of champagne in hand when he spots them dancing together -- and stops in his tracks. Hopefully, no one is trying to speak to him at this moment because he can do little else but stare and somehow manage not to drop his glass. It takes several long moments for his brain to recalibrate enough to rapidly down his drink and then immediately head for the two of them.

There is not a single intelligible thought in his head, but he absolutely must tell them how... beautiful they are. Separately and together.

In his vivid blue-on-black suit, Lancelot immediately arrests the eye. Laertes thinks on how well he'll look beside Susan, their deep blues against the bare, fair skin of their shoulders--like a set, made to flatter each other. He does not match, and for a moment, he feels that disjunction keenly. A flash of shame washes through him, as though he's trespassed on their union ... but he and Susan concocted this scheme together. He has done nothing that she does not approve.

He dips her one last time, deeper than every other dip before, and holds her for a long moment in a graceful, tempting arc.

As she holds the curve, Susan glances at Lancelot, who is distractingly handsome even from this upside-down angle. She looks just long enough to ensure his attention is on the two of them, and then rises up again, practically vertebra by vertebra. As she lifts, she slides her arm up and around Laertes's neck, sinuous, like a pulley's load reaching its peak.

In her heels, she's very nearly of a height with Laertes. It's easy to press in close in a way that pulls the fabric of their halters tight. "He's devastating, isn't he?" she murmurs, mouth barely a centimeter from Laertes's ear.

And if she were properly drunk, rather than vivaciously tipsy and roused by the dance, she might dare to make eye contact with Lancelot and pull Laertes in for a proper kiss. She isn't quite so bold, though. She just flicks a glance over to Lancelot and presses her lips to Laertes's cheek, close to, but not squarely at, the corner of his mouth. Perhaps, she excuses to herself, Lancelot might like to see the smudge of my lipstick there.

He is at their sides in very short order, flushed and smiling, his gaze bright. "My loves!"

For a moment, the kiss stuns Laertes; he freezes with Susan held against him, the music going suddenly hollow and distant in his ears. He wants her, he realizes, but he doesn't want to have had her--he doesn't want to be a lover to her, to have her understanding of him always colored by the knowledge of his body. He doesn't want anything between them to change. It feels as though their friendship is a precipice that he has scaled through great effort of will, straining fingers and toes jammed into the crevices of a sheer rock face, and now the buffeting storm of his desire threatens to hurl him into the abyss.

Then he shakes himself, and lets go to draw Lancelot in for a kiss. "My sweet-heart," he says. There is lipstick staining the corner of his mouth, blood-red.

They make a tremendously appealing picture together, and Susan doesn't bother to pretend she isn't watching them kiss. When it breaks, she smiles up at Lancelot - the helpless smile she so often gets around him, as if it would be just as much work to try to tame it as it usually is for her to coax a smile onto her own face in almost any other circumstance. "My dearest friend," she says. "This is a handsome look."

He, of course, does notice the lipstick adorning Laertes' beloved face; his warm gaze lingers on it a moment before he turns to Susan.

"I would tell thee the same," he keeps a hand on Laertes' arm as he kisses her in turn, sweetly. "The both of thee."

"Go on," says Laertes, grinning, feeling as though he is about to be let go and spun off like a slingstone. "Kiss thy lady. Give her her desserts."

The shine in Susan's eyes doesn't diminish when she flicks her glance to over to Laertes. "Did that one not count?" she teases, settling her hand at Lancelot's hip, opposite the side where he's touching Laertes. "I suppose it was rather modest." And with the mood she's in, she's tremendously unopposed to putting on a show.

Lancelot's gaze flicks between the two of them, and then he laughs. (The thought... No. The thoughts cross his mind: the three of them, together. Together. Like this... and at rest. And--)

His smile does that little thing it sometimes does, when he is feeling both amused and fond, and then he leans in and kisses Laertes again -- deep, reassuring -- before he breaks it and turns to kiss Susan, ostentatiously, in accordance with her demeanor. He has a hand warmly set at each of their waists.

Laertes lets himself be drawn in, a little helplessly, until his hip slots against Susan's. They make an angle now, or a triangle--three points, one of them a vertex, the other two joined by a hypothetical line. Could he calculate their angles? The distance between them? Is there a theorem that he can use to determine the relationship between himself and Susan, by inference from their relationships with Lancelot? He splays a steadying hand at the small of Susan's back, and he knows she must be almost as warm as he is, but her bare skin feels cool beneath his palm.

Susan may feel cool to the touch, but inside, she's aflame. She hasn't got the first idea what's going on in Laertes's head, but she's got a sense of what Lancelot might be thinking, and she's certain the faint note of an unfamiliar taste on Lancelot's lips must be Laertes. It's tremendously difficult to keep setting the awareness of his handsomeness aside, but she's being very good, and whilst she's holding onto Lancelot with one hand, the other is lax at her side. "What's got you in such good spirits?" she asks Lancelot, in that smug, teasing way that means she already knows. And to tease him just a little further, she sways that much closer to Laertes.

"Lady, how can anyone see thee -- the both of thee together, in such bold colors -- and not be in good spirits?"

Open: In a shout of joy at the only shrine where you come benighted and leave benign

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