[Duncan/Rayna] - trollin'
Who:
Duncan
Rayna
When: During the Masque!
Where: At the Masque!
Rating & Warnings: Pretty G, man.
Duncan and Rayna take a break from socializing at the Masque to ignore everyone and concentrate on each other, like a couple'a jerks who think they're better than everyone.
Well! Well- Well was all Rayna could really think to say about the ball. She wasn't out of her element at masques, but something about them always left her feeling disquieted. She had fun, but it was an odd kind of fun. This wasn't a responsible use of money. Masques were anything but innocent, usually just a place to find someone to anonymously sleep with, and yet there were children and priests milling about? So, while she laughed and drank a responsible amount of champagne, Rayna couldn't help but judge the other attendees. Also, plenty of them said such stupid things she wondered how they'd grown as old as they had.
She ran her fingers through her curls, trying not to look a mess, and adjusted the sun in her hair. She ought to go find her husband... He'd be easy to spot at least. Scanning the room, she unfortunately made eye-contact with several people who wandered over to strike up a conversation. She chatted about their hunting dogs, the treatise they were planning on writing, their cousin's wedding before spotting Duncan. "Ihavetogogoodbye," she blurted and started to hurry away. As soon as her back was to the small crowd, she grimaced exaggeratedly.
"I'm through mingling, now I'm going to be a terrible guest and talk to my husband," Rayna hummed, laying a hand on Duncan's arm. "Danced with any particularly nauseating ladies yet?"
Duncan claimed to hate these sorts of things, but honestly, as an excuse to anonymously be incredibly blunt and rude to idiots who came over to discuss the mundane minutae of their lives with him, masques were fucking amazing. Yeah, yeah, he was supposed to be representing the Hour well tonight or something like that, but it was still incredibly satisfying to cut somebody's stupid anecdotes off with, "I'm sorry, were you saying something?"
The amount of champagne he was drinking was edging into irresponsible by the time his wife found him. He'd have a headache in the morning, but he got them so frequently he couldn't be bothered to care. He turned to Rayna with a serene smile, slipping his arm out from under her hand and around her waist instead, pulling her to his side. "I have thus far managed to avoid it by being generally unpleasant. What about you?"
She smiled tightly, pushing her face into Duncan's chest. Her mask was probably too sharp to make the gesture comfortable, but, well, Rayna was comfortable. "I should have guessed. Who would want to dance with you?" After a brief laugh, she let out a sigh. "Not as fortunate as you. I don't have a terrible reputation and therefore have to be nice to most people..."
There was the old noble lord, who remarked on how 'exotic' she looked. Then the young boy who tried to use astronomy as a means to hit on her. Add to that the giant who ogled everyone and Rayna had been made very unhappy in a relatively short stint. "There's another Tartessan here. I tried talking to him, but..." She winced. "He's ridiculous. The worst sort of hound. You should give him several unnecessary surgeries."
He winced and lifted his free hand to nudge her head just a couple degrees to the left, so she wasn't inadvertently stabbing him with her attire. "You should try being insufferable, sometime. Life's much easier."
Another Tartessan, eh? Besmirching the good name of Rayna's homeland? (What good name? Look, never mind all that.) "What's his name?" he asked. "I'll schedule him for a trepanation. Needs more trepanning. Always."
"Mmf," she grunted as he moved her head. "No, someone in your family has to be delightful, funny, pretty, personable..." She could go on, but thought it better not to. Duncan was solid and warm and she really didn't want to be pushed away only to go back to talking with racist, horny and dull men.
Rayna laughed, then snorted, then laughed some more. She had an awful laugh, but didn't feel the need to use a ladylike trill in her husband's presence. "It won't matter much after you give him the... cephalectomy he needs."
"Well, you are the only Evandros who fits that description. I'm sorry you have to bear the burden of being the only likeable one in the family." Definitely an exaggeration; there were enough Evandroses about that some of them were bound to be likeable.
Her laugh might be awful, but it was raw and genuine and he loved to make her laugh just to hear it. Because Duncan is a sap. Cephalectomy was not actually a word, though, and he was a little too drunk to dissect its etymology. "I don't see what cephalopods have to do with this."
Rayna put a hand to her breastbone and pulled a solemn face. "I'll do my best to carry the weight of this on my shoulders." She didn't do much to keep up his family's name, not unless she was forced to, but it was fun to tease. Most nobles were terrible. Duncan was terrible, too, but terrible in a way she liked.
She snorted again. She pictured him cutting off Diya's locks like tentacles. Ha. They were greasy enough... "I mean," she said before taking his wine glass and drinking from it, "You should cut off his head. Though he is very pretty. You could stuff him and put him on the mantle."
Rayna burst out laughing. That was quite possibly the worst thing she'd ever said and she really wasn't even that drunk. Perhaps the Hour had made her hard-hearted...
"Hey!" came out in weak protest to having his drink stolen. He didn't actually do anything about it, of course.
In response to her suggestion, he replied, "Well that's morbid." (And then plucked his drink back from her hand. She'd had too much, obviously.) "I'm not sure it'd be a good idea since you seem to hate him enough to ponder having him stuffed in the first place."
"I've been joking. Everything I said was a joke. Are we clear on that?" she said, smiling, squinting up at him. He probably just wanted his drink back. "And let me count the times you've made morbid jokes on my two-hundred hands. You might be rubbing off on me. Oh, Cita."
"If Cita had anything to do with it, that alone justifies my lack of faith." He paused to address his drink. He could swear it had been more full than this, even considering Rayna's thievery. Had she really taken such a greedy share, or was he just misremembering? Ah, well, whichever it was he finished the damn thing off and reminded himself to refill it as soon as he detached his wife from his side.
"And yes I realize you're joking; I don't take anything you say seriously."
"That's probably for the best." When was she serious? Usually only when she was annoyed and even then it was hard to keep from threatening to reveal her true form as a gorgon or sorceress and vow to rain hellfire down on whoever pissed her off. That was always fun, especially when she was yelling at someone who was dumb or timid enough to believe it.
Rayna eyed his glass and said without any anger or disappointment, "You should slow down. I'm not strong enough to carry you out of here."
"Nonsense, Rayna," he replied. "I have full confidence that you are clever enough to find a solution." (Her solution was probably just leaving him there in the middle of the ballroom floor.)
"And anyway." He squinted down at the empty glass, and then at her. "I can't refill so long as you're attached to me. My inebriation is at your mercy."
"A wheelbarrow, perhaps," she said, then started laughing again. A noble lord being escorted out of a party in a wheelbarrow by his wife. Oh, it was too perfect. Tears started to well at the corners of her eyes.
Rayna squinted back, trying to mimic Duncan's expression. "Are you telling me to go away so you can get drunker? That would make you a terrible husband."
Ah, that laugh again. The mental image was pretty funny, but it was the contagiousness of her own laughter that had him chuckling with her.
He forced himself to seem serious so he could answer properly. "No! No, and that's ridiculous. Obviously I'm telling you to stay because you're a mediating--moderating--sometherating influence on me."
"Obviously," she replied, rolling her eyes as she snuggled in closer. For the first time she noticed that... yes, people were attempting to talk to them. Rayna continued to ignore them. She could just blame it on Duncan's unfriendly aura or... something. "Mitigating? No, that's not right..."
Then a thought took her. Breaking away, Rayna grinned wildly up at her husband. "We should dance." He might just be drunk enough to agree.
"Mmmin...imizing? Ah, fuck it, you know what I meant." Language, Duncan. He did not care, though, in the same way that Rayna did not care about her ugly laugh around him.
To her suggestion, he gave a skeptical, wary stare. "You point out I'm drunk and then ask me to dance? You do know you're setting us up for failure, don't you?"
"Miminigizizing, of course." She didn't care how much he swore; she'd heard all the words before. And their boys, well, they didn't know what they meant. They'd be exposed to them soon enough, anyway.
She raised an eyebrow and smirked in response. You could refuse other women a dance, but you couldn't refuse your wife. Rayna poked him in the chest with one finger. "Have you seen most of the people dancing? You're drunk, but you seem to have control of all your limbs." Which was more than she could say of the other party-goers.
"That's the one."
He gave an amused snort and handed off his empty glass to the nearest patron with a careless, "Hold this for me, would you?" (And, of course, no intention of taking it back later.)
His hands free, he swept his wife out onto the floor and said, "I guess I can spare a dance for you, since you seem so insistent. But no complaining if I step all over your toes or drop you; you knew what you were getting into when you asked."
The sweep took her off-guard and her eyes went wide, then Rayna leaned back and grinned as if she meant to split her face in two. She was only buzzed, but suddenly everything was so much more amusing.
"If you drop me," Rayna threatened, making a mock-serious face, "I'll find the crow or the snake or the witch or all of them and invite them to curse you. You'll be target practice."
Duncan was a decent dancer, even if she kept insulting him. She was a decent dancer, too. If you averaged their drunkenness, then compared it with the ball's average, well, they probably still looked pretty good.
You had to be a decent dancer to get by in a noble family. He'd had lessons like the rest of them, even if he rarely put them to use. Despite the drink, he fell into the motions easily. Or perhaps because of the drink--it let him ignore the rest of the room and center all his attention on the woman in his arms.
"You would never," he said, without missing a beat in the dance (and without stepping on her toes). "If I were cursed, who would tell the boys their bedtime stories?"
"I would... think of a better curse that afflicted me." She couldn't think of any and so focused on their dance. Duncan was good, but so was she. Even if he was drunk and she tipsy, they'd look comparatively fantastic. When she had an opportunity to get close to him in the choreography, Rayna whispered, "You could tell them stories about your curse. You'd be an even more exciting father!"
"Hah! Maybe." He didn't have a clever response to that, though. Too busy enjoying the dance. Dancing was such an odd thing; it could be polite and impersonal, but it could also be exciting and intimate, a private activity shared in a public space.
After a long, comfortable silence had stretched between them through several bars of music, he told her, "We should do this kind of thing more often."
Rayna grinned and nodded as she thought it over. "Not too often," she responded, eyes tilted toward the ceiling. It had been enjoyable, but... balls required guests. They could hardly throw one just for the two of them. "You could throw a ball for the Citadel, so they don't feel so put out."
Cita. What a travesty that would be.
He laughed so hard he nearly dropped her. Nearly. He made a quick save and stopped to affirm their footing, holding her against him. What she'd said wasn't that funny on its own, but he added the part that had made him laugh: "It would go down as the dullest ball in the history of Balfour."
"Holy-" she gasped as she felt the ground slide out from under her feet. Rayna clutched Duncan's shoulders almost tight enough to rip the seams of his jacket and her nostrils flared in annoyance. Her husband was going to drop her. She wasn't easily embarrassed but that, that would be rather mortifying.
Once he righted her, Rayna narrowed her eyes. "Hilarious in its own right, though." She pulled away, smoothing out the front of her dress. "I don't care to dance with someone so clumsy," the adept teased, "I'm going to go find a new dance partner."
"Aww, don't be like that. I'm sorry." He reached out to grab her arm, stopping her from moving any farther away. "You can drop me this time, we'll be even. Besides, all the sleazy old guys in the room have been eying you. I saw it."
"And I shall dance with all of them," she said, lifting her chin and trying to look imperious while holding back a smile. Mostly, she just wanted to find somewhere to sit down and eat something. She was beginning to feel a bit light-headed. "Good evening, my lord."
"Ouch." He reeled back, hand over his heart as if he'd just been struck by an arrow. "I didn't realize dropping one's wife was such a serious offense. Surely we can come to some kind of understanding? One that doesn't involve every man in the room getting to put his hands on you?"
Rayna rolled her eyes and shook her head, grinning. "I'm just making excuses. My feet are aching terribly. I promise I'll keep all the old lechers' hands off of me." It was her turn to put her hand over his heart and gave his chest a quick pat. "Never fear."
Oh, was that all? Acceptable, then. As long as she wasn't getting leered at by people his father's age. "Consider my fears assuaged," he told her, learning in to kiss her forehead. (As much as he wanted to kiss her properly, it would be scandalous here on the dance floor, and he hadn't had so much to drink that he could ignore convention.) "I'll try not to get too drunk while you're gone. I'd hate to end the night in a wheelbarrow."
"Good," she hummed before turning to leave. "I'm sure Lord Myron would not be happy to see one of his stolen." And with that, Rayna hurried off towards the far wall, almost racing for a free chair. If someone took it before she got there, so help her Cita...
Duncan
Rayna
When: During the Masque!
Where: At the Masque!
Rating & Warnings: Pretty G, man.
Duncan and Rayna take a break from socializing at the Masque to ignore everyone and concentrate on each other, like a couple'a jerks who think they're better than everyone.
Well! Well- Well was all Rayna could really think to say about the ball. She wasn't out of her element at masques, but something about them always left her feeling disquieted. She had fun, but it was an odd kind of fun. This wasn't a responsible use of money. Masques were anything but innocent, usually just a place to find someone to anonymously sleep with, and yet there were children and priests milling about? So, while she laughed and drank a responsible amount of champagne, Rayna couldn't help but judge the other attendees. Also, plenty of them said such stupid things she wondered how they'd grown as old as they had.
She ran her fingers through her curls, trying not to look a mess, and adjusted the sun in her hair. She ought to go find her husband... He'd be easy to spot at least. Scanning the room, she unfortunately made eye-contact with several people who wandered over to strike up a conversation. She chatted about their hunting dogs, the treatise they were planning on writing, their cousin's wedding before spotting Duncan. "Ihavetogogoodbye," she blurted and started to hurry away. As soon as her back was to the small crowd, she grimaced exaggeratedly.
"I'm through mingling, now I'm going to be a terrible guest and talk to my husband," Rayna hummed, laying a hand on Duncan's arm. "Danced with any particularly nauseating ladies yet?"
Duncan claimed to hate these sorts of things, but honestly, as an excuse to anonymously be incredibly blunt and rude to idiots who came over to discuss the mundane minutae of their lives with him, masques were fucking amazing. Yeah, yeah, he was supposed to be representing the Hour well tonight or something like that, but it was still incredibly satisfying to cut somebody's stupid anecdotes off with, "I'm sorry, were you saying something?"
The amount of champagne he was drinking was edging into irresponsible by the time his wife found him. He'd have a headache in the morning, but he got them so frequently he couldn't be bothered to care. He turned to Rayna with a serene smile, slipping his arm out from under her hand and around her waist instead, pulling her to his side. "I have thus far managed to avoid it by being generally unpleasant. What about you?"
She smiled tightly, pushing her face into Duncan's chest. Her mask was probably too sharp to make the gesture comfortable, but, well, Rayna was comfortable. "I should have guessed. Who would want to dance with you?" After a brief laugh, she let out a sigh. "Not as fortunate as you. I don't have a terrible reputation and therefore have to be nice to most people..."
There was the old noble lord, who remarked on how 'exotic' she looked. Then the young boy who tried to use astronomy as a means to hit on her. Add to that the giant who ogled everyone and Rayna had been made very unhappy in a relatively short stint. "There's another Tartessan here. I tried talking to him, but..." She winced. "He's ridiculous. The worst sort of hound. You should give him several unnecessary surgeries."
He winced and lifted his free hand to nudge her head just a couple degrees to the left, so she wasn't inadvertently stabbing him with her attire. "You should try being insufferable, sometime. Life's much easier."
Another Tartessan, eh? Besmirching the good name of Rayna's homeland? (What good name? Look, never mind all that.) "What's his name?" he asked. "I'll schedule him for a trepanation. Needs more trepanning. Always."
"Mmf," she grunted as he moved her head. "No, someone in your family has to be delightful, funny, pretty, personable..." She could go on, but thought it better not to. Duncan was solid and warm and she really didn't want to be pushed away only to go back to talking with racist, horny and dull men.
Rayna laughed, then snorted, then laughed some more. She had an awful laugh, but didn't feel the need to use a ladylike trill in her husband's presence. "It won't matter much after you give him the... cephalectomy he needs."
"Well, you are the only Evandros who fits that description. I'm sorry you have to bear the burden of being the only likeable one in the family." Definitely an exaggeration; there were enough Evandroses about that some of them were bound to be likeable.
Her laugh might be awful, but it was raw and genuine and he loved to make her laugh just to hear it. Because Duncan is a sap. Cephalectomy was not actually a word, though, and he was a little too drunk to dissect its etymology. "I don't see what cephalopods have to do with this."
Rayna put a hand to her breastbone and pulled a solemn face. "I'll do my best to carry the weight of this on my shoulders." She didn't do much to keep up his family's name, not unless she was forced to, but it was fun to tease. Most nobles were terrible. Duncan was terrible, too, but terrible in a way she liked.
She snorted again. She pictured him cutting off Diya's locks like tentacles. Ha. They were greasy enough... "I mean," she said before taking his wine glass and drinking from it, "You should cut off his head. Though he is very pretty. You could stuff him and put him on the mantle."
Rayna burst out laughing. That was quite possibly the worst thing she'd ever said and she really wasn't even that drunk. Perhaps the Hour had made her hard-hearted...
"Hey!" came out in weak protest to having his drink stolen. He didn't actually do anything about it, of course.
In response to her suggestion, he replied, "Well that's morbid." (And then plucked his drink back from her hand. She'd had too much, obviously.) "I'm not sure it'd be a good idea since you seem to hate him enough to ponder having him stuffed in the first place."
"I've been joking. Everything I said was a joke. Are we clear on that?" she said, smiling, squinting up at him. He probably just wanted his drink back. "And let me count the times you've made morbid jokes on my two-hundred hands. You might be rubbing off on me. Oh, Cita."
"If Cita had anything to do with it, that alone justifies my lack of faith." He paused to address his drink. He could swear it had been more full than this, even considering Rayna's thievery. Had she really taken such a greedy share, or was he just misremembering? Ah, well, whichever it was he finished the damn thing off and reminded himself to refill it as soon as he detached his wife from his side.
"And yes I realize you're joking; I don't take anything you say seriously."
"That's probably for the best." When was she serious? Usually only when she was annoyed and even then it was hard to keep from threatening to reveal her true form as a gorgon or sorceress and vow to rain hellfire down on whoever pissed her off. That was always fun, especially when she was yelling at someone who was dumb or timid enough to believe it.
Rayna eyed his glass and said without any anger or disappointment, "You should slow down. I'm not strong enough to carry you out of here."
"Nonsense, Rayna," he replied. "I have full confidence that you are clever enough to find a solution." (Her solution was probably just leaving him there in the middle of the ballroom floor.)
"And anyway." He squinted down at the empty glass, and then at her. "I can't refill so long as you're attached to me. My inebriation is at your mercy."
"A wheelbarrow, perhaps," she said, then started laughing again. A noble lord being escorted out of a party in a wheelbarrow by his wife. Oh, it was too perfect. Tears started to well at the corners of her eyes.
Rayna squinted back, trying to mimic Duncan's expression. "Are you telling me to go away so you can get drunker? That would make you a terrible husband."
Ah, that laugh again. The mental image was pretty funny, but it was the contagiousness of her own laughter that had him chuckling with her.
He forced himself to seem serious so he could answer properly. "No! No, and that's ridiculous. Obviously I'm telling you to stay because you're a mediating--moderating--sometherating influence on me."
"Obviously," she replied, rolling her eyes as she snuggled in closer. For the first time she noticed that... yes, people were attempting to talk to them. Rayna continued to ignore them. She could just blame it on Duncan's unfriendly aura or... something. "Mitigating? No, that's not right..."
Then a thought took her. Breaking away, Rayna grinned wildly up at her husband. "We should dance." He might just be drunk enough to agree.
"Mmmin...imizing? Ah, fuck it, you know what I meant." Language, Duncan. He did not care, though, in the same way that Rayna did not care about her ugly laugh around him.
To her suggestion, he gave a skeptical, wary stare. "You point out I'm drunk and then ask me to dance? You do know you're setting us up for failure, don't you?"
"Miminigizizing, of course." She didn't care how much he swore; she'd heard all the words before. And their boys, well, they didn't know what they meant. They'd be exposed to them soon enough, anyway.
She raised an eyebrow and smirked in response. You could refuse other women a dance, but you couldn't refuse your wife. Rayna poked him in the chest with one finger. "Have you seen most of the people dancing? You're drunk, but you seem to have control of all your limbs." Which was more than she could say of the other party-goers.
"That's the one."
He gave an amused snort and handed off his empty glass to the nearest patron with a careless, "Hold this for me, would you?" (And, of course, no intention of taking it back later.)
His hands free, he swept his wife out onto the floor and said, "I guess I can spare a dance for you, since you seem so insistent. But no complaining if I step all over your toes or drop you; you knew what you were getting into when you asked."
The sweep took her off-guard and her eyes went wide, then Rayna leaned back and grinned as if she meant to split her face in two. She was only buzzed, but suddenly everything was so much more amusing.
"If you drop me," Rayna threatened, making a mock-serious face, "I'll find the crow or the snake or the witch or all of them and invite them to curse you. You'll be target practice."
Duncan was a decent dancer, even if she kept insulting him. She was a decent dancer, too. If you averaged their drunkenness, then compared it with the ball's average, well, they probably still looked pretty good.
You had to be a decent dancer to get by in a noble family. He'd had lessons like the rest of them, even if he rarely put them to use. Despite the drink, he fell into the motions easily. Or perhaps because of the drink--it let him ignore the rest of the room and center all his attention on the woman in his arms.
"You would never," he said, without missing a beat in the dance (and without stepping on her toes). "If I were cursed, who would tell the boys their bedtime stories?"
"I would... think of a better curse that afflicted me." She couldn't think of any and so focused on their dance. Duncan was good, but so was she. Even if he was drunk and she tipsy, they'd look comparatively fantastic. When she had an opportunity to get close to him in the choreography, Rayna whispered, "You could tell them stories about your curse. You'd be an even more exciting father!"
"Hah! Maybe." He didn't have a clever response to that, though. Too busy enjoying the dance. Dancing was such an odd thing; it could be polite and impersonal, but it could also be exciting and intimate, a private activity shared in a public space.
After a long, comfortable silence had stretched between them through several bars of music, he told her, "We should do this kind of thing more often."
Rayna grinned and nodded as she thought it over. "Not too often," she responded, eyes tilted toward the ceiling. It had been enjoyable, but... balls required guests. They could hardly throw one just for the two of them. "You could throw a ball for the Citadel, so they don't feel so put out."
Cita. What a travesty that would be.
He laughed so hard he nearly dropped her. Nearly. He made a quick save and stopped to affirm their footing, holding her against him. What she'd said wasn't that funny on its own, but he added the part that had made him laugh: "It would go down as the dullest ball in the history of Balfour."
"Holy-" she gasped as she felt the ground slide out from under her feet. Rayna clutched Duncan's shoulders almost tight enough to rip the seams of his jacket and her nostrils flared in annoyance. Her husband was going to drop her. She wasn't easily embarrassed but that, that would be rather mortifying.
Once he righted her, Rayna narrowed her eyes. "Hilarious in its own right, though." She pulled away, smoothing out the front of her dress. "I don't care to dance with someone so clumsy," the adept teased, "I'm going to go find a new dance partner."
"Aww, don't be like that. I'm sorry." He reached out to grab her arm, stopping her from moving any farther away. "You can drop me this time, we'll be even. Besides, all the sleazy old guys in the room have been eying you. I saw it."
"And I shall dance with all of them," she said, lifting her chin and trying to look imperious while holding back a smile. Mostly, she just wanted to find somewhere to sit down and eat something. She was beginning to feel a bit light-headed. "Good evening, my lord."
"Ouch." He reeled back, hand over his heart as if he'd just been struck by an arrow. "I didn't realize dropping one's wife was such a serious offense. Surely we can come to some kind of understanding? One that doesn't involve every man in the room getting to put his hands on you?"
Rayna rolled her eyes and shook her head, grinning. "I'm just making excuses. My feet are aching terribly. I promise I'll keep all the old lechers' hands off of me." It was her turn to put her hand over his heart and gave his chest a quick pat. "Never fear."
Oh, was that all? Acceptable, then. As long as she wasn't getting leered at by people his father's age. "Consider my fears assuaged," he told her, learning in to kiss her forehead. (As much as he wanted to kiss her properly, it would be scandalous here on the dance floor, and he hadn't had so much to drink that he could ignore convention.) "I'll try not to get too drunk while you're gone. I'd hate to end the night in a wheelbarrow."
"Good," she hummed before turning to leave. "I'm sure Lord Myron would not be happy to see one of his stolen." And with that, Rayna hurried off towards the far wall, almost racing for a free chair. If someone took it before she got there, so help her Cita...