Costume Gala

[broken_brushes]

I have to admit, I had wondered whether I was tempting fate by hosting a party on Halloween. Sure, the last Halloween had been mostly harmless and Tony and Pepper's party had gone off without a hitch. But I'd been on the island far too long to trust in its benevolence

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[justsookie]

Costume parties had never really been Sookie's thing back in Bon Temps. As a child, she'd tried them about once every three years or so, just enough time in between to forget the horror of having to listen to all of her peers think snide thoughts about one another's costumes, and as an adult, hearing people consider ways of getting into Princess Leia's bikini or under James Bond's suit weren't really all that much better. It detracted from the charm that Sookie felt costume parties were meant to have, to give people an opportunity to dress up as someone else, behave differently, put on a mask for a night and try another person's shoes. Fortunately on the island, all other distractions were removed as Sookie stepped as a fairy, wearing an outfit that the Clothes Box had rather generously chosen. Not too risqué, but certainly flirty, fitting for a young woman who only really wanted to attract one person's eyes that night, someone who would be specifically looking after her at the party.

Smiling from ear to ear, Sookie enjoyed the light bounce of her wings as she swept about, greeting friends and admiring costumes, a glass of liquor carefully held in her hand. At first, Sookie could hardly find the time to pull Mitchell aside for a dance or two, too caught up in greeting everyone she knew, but at the first opportunity for a breather, Sookie also noticed a dark, clouded area toward the back of the room. Was that part of the decoration? Or was it possible that there was something behind all of that fog that people needed to be aware of?

Swiftly but without breaking into a run, Sookie rushed on over to the cloud, brow knit in confusion as she waved an arm through the substance, then considered stepping right on in.

[ Feel free either to pull Sookie away from the cloud, or to catch her once she's already inside! ]

[nothingtomiss]

It's not much of a costume (though he'll definitely be holding onto the jacket at the end of the night) and the fangs are faintly uncomfortable, but he's making an effort. The cloud is...fucking weird, and Brad feels his gut give a very definite kick.

He's learned to trust his gut.
He reaches out and snags Sookie's elbow.

"Don't."

[justsookie]

Gasping when a hand grabs for Sookie's elbow, the blonde whips around and tries to immediately pull herself away, especially after her gaze lands on that familiar face. Fangs, she recalls, are a sign of some type of heightened interested, often sexual, and that only adds to Sookie's distaste as her eyes widen.

"Eric? When- when did you get here? And get your hands off me; no matter how much you're hopin' for it, I'm not nearly as happy to see you as you are to see me right now." Her free hand smooths down her leafy skirt, just in case that's what's been piquing Eric's interest this time.

[nothingtomiss]

"Brad," he says, used to having this conversation with her by now. His eyebrow raises. "Both my husband and my fiancee are here somewhere, Sookie. Be advised: I'm not interested."

[justsookie]

"Uh, even if I was interested? I've got a boyfriend too, y'know, and I'm not about to cheat on- wait, Brad?" Sookie immediately raises a hand to her lips, eyes widening with shock and no longer caring about the words that slipped out from her mouth without preamble. Tilting her head at Brad, she reaches out, not enough to touch but enough to directly point at the pair of fangs he's wearing. "So these are... oh, fudge, Halloween. I swear, that outfit, and those fangs, they make you look exactly like Eric, if your face bein' the same wasn't weird enough. Lemme guess- the clothes box just coughed it up, fangs and all?"

[lastof_five]

Helen hated fancy dress parties as a general rule but when the clothes box had deigned to give her something serviceable if a little later than her own era, Helen had jumped at the opportunity. Besides, spending Halloween alone with a book and cat was eerily drifting back toward the lady and her cat cliche and she tried to avoid that if at all possible.

Sookie was someone she recognized and seeing the odd mist about, she didn't want her stumbling into something unpleasant; Helen thought it was just intuition, but it didn't seem right. She caught her by the elbow.

"I wouldn't recommend that, Sookie. It doesn't seem quite right."

[justsookie]

Fortunately, the light touch on her elbow kept Sookie from startling too much as she turned quickly around with a sharp breath, exhaling with relief when she saw who it was.

"Goodness, Helen, you started me-"

But before Sookie could address the warning, her lips parted approvingly as she leaned back to get a better look at the woman's outfit, a beautifully tailored outfit that Sookie definitely recognized as being from Titanic. With lightly flushed cheeks, Sookie beamed from ear to ear.

"Oh my stars, you look so beautiful in your costume. You're just blowin' away everyone else here! And I love the movie Titanic, so that just makes this all the better."

[lastof_five]

"Is that what this is from? I haven't been to the cinema in ages."

The costume was appropriate for the turn of the century and it made her feel more at home than anything she'd really worn on the island so far. She thought she might keep it, though it was hardly serviceable for a regular day out.

She almost mentioned she'd been on the Titanic and, subsequently fished from the water by Molly Brown herself, but stayed her tongue. No sense in trying to explain the inexplicable, at least not yet.

"I'm rather fond of it, yes. And you make quite a fetching faerie." Helen tugged off her gloves and nodded a little.

"You wouldn't happen to have seen Will about tonight, have you? I've been looking for him."

[justsookie]

"Oh yes, that's definitely where the outfit's from; I can remember it perfectly, Rose wore it right toward the beginnin' of the film when she and Cal were just talking about the Titanic. And she was thinking about how it was like she was trapped and she didn't want to be on that boat, but- well, anyway," Sookie laughed, sheepish about being such a big fan of the movie at all and running her hand through her curls to try and tame them a bit. "Anyway, thank you! I do think the design of this is pretty cute, with the leaves and all." She twirled around once for emphasis, wondering if the alcohol had managed to get a bit to her head after all, the movement a little more dizzying than she was accustomed to.

But she quieted down as soon as Helen asked her question, giving the cloud a wary look before stepping aside, arm wrapped around the older woman's. "And no, actually, I haven't... seen Will around. Is he comin' to the party? I don't really see him often enough to know."

[lastof_five]

"He told me he was," Helen said, laughing a little. "Of course, he does have a tendency to find trouble, so perhaps he'd just been detoured. That, or a patient's called his attention. He's very devoted to his work."

Helen was envious of that. She hardly had any surgeries to perform on the island and there were no Abnormals to rescue. Nothing to do, really, but read and research and sunbathe until she was freckled and squinting in the sunlight.

"Did you come with anyone, then?"

[justsookie]

There was a quiet tension in Helen's expression, one which reminded Sookie a fair amount of the way that Meredith looked at times. Restless. Pensive. The type of worry that would earn either of them premature wrinkles. She very nearly rested a hand on Helen's shoulder then, before she was caught a little off-guard by her question, one which pulled an instinctive smile to her face and blush to her cheeks.

"Oh, um. I came- I came with Mitchell, my boyfriend, who's somewhere in the room, but I try not to stay attached to his hip at all times," Sookie replied while gesturing vaguely with her hand, trying to keep her tone as light and casual as possible, even though in spite of the three months they'd been together, she couldn't help the excited flutter that still rose in her chest at the very thought of him. "But wait, I had a thought- you don't think Will might've wandered into one of the clouds, do you? I know I stick my nose into stuff when I shouldn't, but he's not as blonde as I am, right?"

[lastof_five]

Once, it would have been Helen with the shy little smile and the blush about her lover but those days had come and gone, faded away into the cool fogs of a London past. Still, she could appreciate that sort of happy flush in someone else and at least, by proxy, she could be a little happy too.

And then Sookie mentioned the odd cloud again, which set her mind to working.

"You know," Helen said, pursing her lips as she mulled it over. "It's very well possible. I'm not sure what those clouds do, but they seem entirely unnatural. I sincerely hope he hasn't wandered off into one."

Still, if he had, Will was a capable man. Most of the time.

[justsookie]

Even if there was no real proof yet that the clouds were real trouble for the island, Sookie already started glancing around the room, picking out people she knew and gradually relaxing with each familiar face. Of course, she still had to worry for all of the people she didn't really know on the island, who might have disappeared into the fog and found something far from their liking, but the only thing worse than an innocent stranger coming across trouble was someone Sookie cared about finding it instead. Once she'd picked out Mitchell's curly locks some distance away, her shoulders lowered, released from the tension.

But Will, she hadn't spotted yet.

"I don't... see him anywhere, which of course is more than enough to set me worryin', I guess," Sookie replied as she turned to face Helen again. "Do you think anyone on the island's checkin' those clouds out? I mean, even if Will's not foolish enough to set on in one without a reason, he's got patients he looks after and worries, and I think if he could, he'd look after everyone on the island. I can picture him runnin' right in there to retrieve someone."

[lastof_five]

"Unfortunately, you're not off the mark with that one," Helen said, nodding a little in agreement. "He's saved me from enough scrapes, headstrong man."

She said it fondly enough, considering, but she really did wish that Will was less likely to sacrifice life and limb on her behalf.

"I'll run across him eventually, I'm sure. I don't want him to think I'm...hovering."

[justsookie]

The fact that Helen didn't seem overly distraught at the idea of Will having wandered into the clouds made Sookie feel a little more at ease, trusting that the other woman knew Will far better than she did. That didn't stop the fog from being of particular interest to her, but even Sookie could be shaken into being more sensible when others caught her in time. Instead, she focused again on Helen, a part of her still strongly wishing and hoping that Will would work up the courage to try at a relationship with her at some point. Maybe it was the fact that her own relationship was progressing well that made her optimistic, but she was.

Then again, it had been quite a while since she'd been around so many people who were reasonable and level-headed about romance, and it was definitely a welcome change.

"Well, even if you were," Sookie replied with a quickly widening smile. "He'd be real lucky to have a woman like you hoverin' around. And there's nothin' wrong with asking him for a dance here, maybe."

[lastof_five]

Helen laughed a little, caught off guard by the idea that someone besides her had any real interest in whether or not she and Will danced in sync with one another or just spiraled around it with no real success.

"Ah, well, I don't even know if Will can dance. It's never really come up, given that we mostly just have a working relationship. And a friendship, to be sure, but nothing where dancing's ever come up. I'm rambling. Quite sorry."