ArchivedLogs:Winning the Game

Winning the Game
Dramatis Personae Sebastian, Shelby
In Absentia	2013-05-31 '
Location <XS> Great Hall
The largest room at Xavier's, the Great Hall is designed to hold all of the mansion's residents and then some. Built for the mansion's bigger functions, it serves as the school's dining halls on ordinary days, and ballroom when needed. On school days, long trestle tables stretch across the hall, high-backed chairs with plush cushions offering seating for the students. Today the Great Hall has been transformed. Gone are its usual lengthy tables for serving meals. Instead, round tables ring two sides of the room; their white tablecloths are accented in ribbons of black and blue. Along one side the tables stand empty, just a place to rest and chat in between dancing; along the adjacent side, they are heavy-laden with snacks, as well as bowls of punch and iced tea and lemonade, water and chilled sodas. The DJ's booth stands in back, taking requests so long as they are not TOO risque. The dancefloor commanding most of the center of the room gleams in polished wood underfoot. Above, the large chandelier that normally hangs forgotten during the busy school days shines in its full glittering splendor; smaller fluted lamps hang dotted in satellite-orbit around the rest of the ceiling. Where many high school dances might have decorated with streamers, Xavier's has decorated with /light/, spiraling ribbons of it that drift down in muted-soft glow from the chandelier to wreath the moulding and glimmer more subtly down the walls. For those paying attention, the accenting ribbons of light are not /steady/ in their patterns; sometimes just a gentle spiral, sometimes a tracery of vinework with leaves and flowers, sometimes a web of delicate filigree that glitters against the walls. Swing music can wait! As stoner chic creeps through the minds and souls of the dancing students, Shelby is not at all shy about stepping in closer to Bastian. Draped arms become curled arms and though she has to look down at him, courtesy of the heels, she doesn’t seem to mind--it means she can give an affectionate nose-bump to his forehead as she settles into a dreamier rhythm. This is a much, much simpler dance. Step, sway, step, sway. The mellowness felt is of the contented variety and not /all/ of that comes of Ryan’s influence. “Y’know,” she says under the music’s pulse, “if you’d told me like a couple weeks ago I’d be here right now, tonight, wearing a fancy ass dress and dancing with you, I’d have laughed ‘til I cried.” Maybe there’s hope for her eventual lyric-writing career yet. “A couple weeks ago --” Perhaps Bastian is genuinely struggling to think back that far or perhaps the empathic influence is just making him kind of fuzzybrained. His arms curl around her waist, a small smile on his face at the nose-bump. His rhythm unthinkingly falls in to match hers, slow sway, relaxed. “-- it’s a gorgeous dress. I mean, /you’re/ --” His arms squeeze a little tighter. “... been kind of crazy, hasn’t it? I think it’s looking up, though. I mean, you’re wearing a fancy dress dancing /and/ you’re suddenly rolling in cash.” “I’m pretty gorgeous too.” Shelby has no qualms about finishing that statement, though she follows it up with, “Maybe not five grand worth of gorgeous but Kris was paying, so...” Who was she to say no? Resistance isn’t her strong suit: note the way she responds to squeezing by leaning a little more into him. “Won’t be rolling in cash /too/ long. I promised Shane some stuff, and I wanna get you something nice. And then maybe get a car. But...” She drops her head forward, resting brow almost to brow. “I don’t think there’s a /word/ for what it’s been like. How’re you holding up, with all this?” “Yeah,” Bastian agrees, his smile widening. Except then his /eyes/ widen, brows lifting in surprise -- “Five grand of -- what?” He looks at the dress all over again. “... for serious?” His head kind of /bonks/ back into place against hers. “You know, with a car suddenly /every/ single person’s gonna be clamoring to be your new bff,” he says with a sudden amused grin. “At boarding school that is seriously valuable currency.” He quiets at the question. His shoulders shrug once, dismissively. “Been through worse,” he says lightly. But then his eyes lift to meet hers and he admits more quietly: “... still not easy, though.” “I know, right? She said it was nothing but man...” Shelby uses the time when they are not head-leaning to shake hers. Rich people. They are strange. Then she settles comfortably against him again and matches his grin for her smile. “It’ll be like practice for when /I’m/ rich and famous. I know who my peeps are. Not gonna forget ‘em.” Her arms are spindly but still strong enough for a firm squeeze, when the person she is squeezing lacks proper bones. The look he gives is returned levelly, without blinking. “You been hiding a lot more. Since you got back. Must be fucking hard. Bullshit like that, then trying to figure out what’s changed here. If it’s changed, ‘cause of what happened.” “I can’t really imagine five grand being nothing. That’s -- like. Uh. Man what do her parents --” Sebastian’s nose wrinkles. “/Did/ her parents do, I guess,” finishes a little more subdued, but his smile returns quickly enough. “Will you write songs about how you remember your /roots/? And then sing them on MTV and let us come with you to uh --” He frowns. “Actually I don’t really know where rich famous people hang out.” He glances towards the DJ booth. “We should ask Ryan.” And then more quieting. “Things always change,” he answers at length. “I just --” His fingers curl a little bit tighter against her. “Maybe this time it was me.” Shelby suggests, “Hang out at the Lofts?” as the answer for what celebrities like Ryan do. It is a funny answer. She’d laugh but... Most of her attention remains locked on studying what she can see of his face. No easy task, between the shifting light and their close postures. Shelby answers a tighter grip with a lighter touch, curling her hand to brush her fingertips over his gills. Happy--it doesn’t only come from the music. “You think you changed? With...what happened?” Even now she can’t put a name to it, still bristles at /their/ joking names for it and looks uncomfortable to be speaking of /it/ at all. In spite of having been the one to have brought it up. But...she continues on. Because. “I think...I mean, I think it’s gotta be...like. Normal. To feel weird after something...that messed up. You just gotta give yourself time, right?” Sebastian’s eyes slip closed, and his shiver at the touch to his gills is decidedly a happy one. His tone is not, though; not particularly happy or sad or anything much. “With -- no. Not with what they did to us,” he says slowly. “With what I did.” His head turns slightly, neck stretching to let her fingers curl even more against his gills. “Kind of just feels dangerous. To be here. To be anywhere.” “Oh B.” Like him, she is dividing tone and action. Shelby’s fingers curl a little more, their backs running in smooth and even strokes down his neck. Happy! More of it! But her tone of voice has the weight of weeks of worry and worse within it. “You did what they made you do. You’ve always...you’re working on not /being/ that way so much. And they fucked with that. That’s not on you. You talk like that and I think...nngh. You can’t talk like that. Okay?” Sebastian sinks in slightly against her, more of his weight transferring to lean up against Shelby. Thankfully his weight doesn’t amount to /much/. “Ivan asked me if I was a serial killer,” he says in answer to this. “Like for-serious he was worried I was --” His cheeks puff out, but the breath he ends up expelling is just soft and -- kind of happier. Mmmgills. “We work on it a lot. But people see us and they just think -- dangerous. Feral. Animals. And the thing is they’re not /wrong/.” His expression scrunches up, head lifting only to rest up gently against hers once more. “I’m sorry. This is. I really like being here. I mean, /here/ -- right now. With you-here. I shouldn’t be -- whatever I’m doing.” Dancing is all about the steady shift of balance. Shelby, as the taller of the two, is happy to take this weight and the lead. It’s easier, while moving. Of course, when he says what he does about Ivan, smooth and easy movement is broken for a moment. She wobbles on her too-tall heels, drawing back to blink at him. “...he did /what/? Jesus. Was it...” No. No, she’s not /even/ going to ask. Because /what/. It takes a moment to recover but eventually the swaying resumes, the stroking resumes and conversation...well, that comes more slowly. “Know what I think? I think feral animals don’t /think/ or /worry/ about the folks around them. They just do what they do. You’re not like that. You think and worry more’n anyone I know.” “Yeah, I. I mean, I’m -- creepy I know but I -- don’t. Go around.” Sebastian wrinkles his nose. He has largely given up on dancing, mostly just sort of rocking, a little slow, a little melty as she continues playing her fingers against his neck. Her answer makes him blink. Sort of surprised, his head dipping for a moment. He glances over to the nearest teacher-figure and then back to Shelby, a small smile creeping its way across his face. It’s a little watery, but it’s genuine. “... I think I kind of want to kiss you.” “Yeah, I sometimes kinda wanna kiss me too.” She can’t help herself. Deliver solemn observation in one breath, find a smart aleck remark to make with the next. Shelby’s grin shades into a smaller smile a splitsecond later though. She rearranges her arms around his neck, hands leaving his gills to pull Bastian that little bit closer. “Look at you, breakin’ the rules,” she says quietly before tilting her head just so to allow what he wants. Bastian’s smile widens in the moment before he lifts up onto his toes to press his mouth to hers. Soft first but then deeper, his arms curling around her to squeeze tighter. It takes a while before he breaks off, probably coincidentally timed with one of the chaperones starting to draw near. “... how are /you/ holding up?” he wants to know. “I mean, everything’s -- pretty much crazy.” Shelby completes the gesture by dipping her head down. Soft first but then deeper, she answers the kiss with enthusiasm--and would have continued to do so, but for Bastian’s superior authority radar. Defiance is in her blood and she expresses it by capping that moment with a smaller kiss, touched to the very corner of his lips. “You kidding? Look at me,” she claims, “I got the dress, I got first place, I got you and Shane and Peter back, Hive came to a kid’s dance with me...I think I kinda won the game while no one was looking.” This puts a smile on Bastian’s face, but only at a delay; there’s a thoughtful look, first, and the curl of his lips is slow. He follows up the small kiss with another! Dotted light to her lips. Like a /rebel/. “Mmm,” it’s a quiet thoughtful hum, preceding a brief flare of gills before they close again. “That’s --” Another hesitation. His hand shifts, fingers skimming up against her arm. “Good,” it’s a cautious kind of optimism, as he falls back into the absent rhythmic sway of HighSchoolDancing. “You’ve been kind of due for a win.” Ono, gills. Shelby adjusts one arm so she can trace the pad of her thumb down on a path to soothe the flaring. That he’s bold enough to return her kiss, much less in full view of authority figures, strengthens her smile--as does the touch that prompts a shiver. Tickly. “BB,” she says, making the double initial a fond exclamation, “out of all of us I think I’m like /least/ due. But hell, I’ll take it. If it keeps you smiling.” She pauses for a beat, taking the time to study his eyes. Sadly, black on black eyes are easier at hiding the thoughts behind them but she /tries/. “Life’s shitty but you should smile more.” “I don’t think that’s -- like a /relative/ thing, Shelby,” Bastian says, and it’s kind of earnest for all there’s a hint of amusement behind the words. “You deserve some happy as much as anyone.” His eyes are, as mentioned, somewhat harder to read, but they’re slightly wide, and very intently focused on Shelby’s. “I’m smiling,” he says, and right now he /is/, warm and bright if not toothy like Shane’s. His hand slides up to her shoulder, stays there, fingers curling snug against her. “Right now, I’m smiling.” “Psh.” Just like that, and with a kiss to the tip of his nose, Shelby declares Sebastian’s arguments invalid and therefore unworthy of answering. Continued smiling, however, is to be encouraged. This time it’s Shelby who leans into him, letting the disguised strength of shark support her through their matched swaying steps. “Maybe we’ll get lucky,” she muses, “and you’ll be able to stay like that forever. At least tonight. I don’t think anything’s allowed to go wrong tonight.” Having declared it so, she reaches around to take the hand not on her shoulder and lowers it until his fingers are threatening the border between hip and rear. Take /that/ chaperones. Anything for a smile. “Oh man,” Sebastian’s smile widens although it’s /crooked/ now, “don’t say that till /after/ the afterparty’s over.” Or someone is sure to bust it the moment the booze gets trotted out. For all his small size he is a sturdy post for leaning against, keeping lazy rhythm with Shelby. His eyes widen when she moves his hand. But he doesn’t move it /away/. A flush creeps up his cheeks but he spreads his fingers slightly, curling them firmly down against her. It’s almost like a squeeze! And at least through the remainder of this song, his smile is in no danger of vanishing.