An Affair At Lambeth Palace

[noonelaughed]

It's not even Chris's idea this time. It's Tony that comes to him, saying that there ought to be another party. And seeing as it's been months and months since Maxxie's birthday, Chris is all for it, even if it's not like they can go and just find a cave like last time. The island's bolloxed that all up by turning into fuckin' London

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[little_moons]

It's cold as fuck outside, and when I step in through the doors of the place, I'm bundled in too many layers to count. The fucking clothes in the place are no less complicated to me now than they were that first day.

But the more people pile in, the warmer it gets, and I've lost my coat, my jacket, my waistcoat, my shoes, and my shirt's half unbuttoned. The absinthe tastes fucking weird, but I've got a pretty fucking awesome buzz going, and this is a pretty great break from little girls and too much Christmas cheer.

Not that I don't love all that shit, but I was in pretty dire need of a night like this.

Weaving through the crowd, I look for a familiar face, grabbing another glass on my way past a refreshment table.

[behindtheskin]

Haven't had a drop. Haven't had a bite. Haven't had a pill. Yet the earth still shakes underneath my feet, and I think I feel them now, cracks splaying like a spider's web, reaching. Reaching. Not half so strong. I know why I'm here, although a part of me feels that I'm not at all, hardly visible to anyone's eye as I wait for the whole world to fall. It's today. I know that it'll be today. The night's too beautiful for fate to have it fall on any other, and the air thrums, the music tugs at that little spot in one's heart, begs for a dance.

He's not the first one that I expect to find, but perhaps he's the best nonetheless; I feel the tension slip from my shoulders with the touch of all he expects me to be. Standing by his side without a word nor a gaze, just a faint smile on my lips and the awareness that he's there.

[little_moons]

I don't see her at first.

She gets lost in the mass of bodies, in the haze, but I'm not fucked up enough to miss her completely. I catch a glimpse of her out of the corner of my eye, a smudge of dark, but this time, I know it's not Wendy.

Turning on my heel to face her, I reach up, tuck a strand of hair behind her ear. "Hey."

[behindtheskin]

He's not a brother, exactly. Not a best friend. I don't know what he is, really, only that when he pushes my hair behind an ear, it's comfortable. Painted my eyes a bit darker than usual. Went to a few shops, not holding back- think it might all disappear soon, anyway, rouge on my cheeks and staining my lips, the only remaining touch of the way things were. Gaze hovering between his eyes and the ground below, I turn a bit closer, a faint smile on my lips, allowing myself to feel safe for now.

"Having fun?" I ask, trying for that bright edge in my eyes as my arms slide up over his shoulders. It'd be good to see him smile.

[turnedtoproust]

There are certain things that you just don't miss. Scripps is well-aware that if he actually touches any of the drugs, he's going to hate himself for some time to come, but there's really nothing to prevent him from grabbing a drink and merely wandering around through the halls, marvelling at every turn at the fact that he's about to help desecrate a bit of history.

It's fitting. It's actually a bit cheering. He hopes Dakin's got his note about the plans for the evening, mostly because he doesn't want to endure this alone.

[madeofstories]

"You should be dancing," Grace says when she finds Scripps at the party. She wasn't sure that this would be the sort of party he'd like, but now that she's seen him there, she's not going to let him merely wander. She's spent a good bit of the party dancing herself, and whether that's to do with the pill or just because she adores the music is up for debate.

[turnedtoproust]

Scripps lets loose a smile of delight to see such a familiar face -- and a welcome one at that -- but he's not sure what to make of such suggestions of dancing. "You know, I can dance a mean foxtrot and I'm passable with a waltz, but I have this funny inkling that you don't mean either of those things."

[madeofstories]

"Not exactly, no," is Grace's response, but there's still a wide smile on her face as she says it. She doesn't think there's necessarily anything wrong with doing the foxtrot or waltzing at one of these parties, but somehow it feels as if he'll be let off easy in that case.

Before he can protest, she reaches out and grabs his hand. "Come on, I'll show you."

[imastud_dude]

The last one of these parties he'd gone to? He'd like, majorly freaked out. And it was kind of embarrassing, after all his talk of being such a bad ass. Memories of that night were kind of hazy, but he was pretty sure he spent part of the night in a corner crying for his mommy.

So, he was avoiding the hard stuff. He could get completely lit and have an awesome time, without hallucinating that his 'hawk was trying to crawl off his head and kill him.

He didn't technically need the pimp cane or the top hat, but they looked beyond cool, and Lisbeth looked smoking hot in her dress, so all in all, the party was turning out kind of awesome.

[user_wasp]

Lisbeth preferred to be quiet in her approaches, and perhaps the music would drown out the clicking of her heels on stone. "Hey," she said, and though she was done up to the nines, she seemed comfortable.

Maybe it had to do with the whole outfit being a costume, or maybe it had to do with the trust she was slowly building in him.

[imastud_dude]

He hadn't gotten used to the dress.

It showed on his face every time he looked at her, his eyes bulging, after a brief moment where he hardly seemed to recognize her. She just looked so different.

"Hey," he said ineloquently, "You, uh... You want a drink?"

[user_wasp]

That earned him a smile.

"I think I would," she said, with surprising enunciation. She could turn that on and off too, and while she recognized the risk of showing him yet another side of herself, he'd handled the earlier mess.

"Absinthe, please."

[apoorupbringing]

Chase had heard about the last few of these that he'd missed by being, probably, drunk on his own or trying to appear studious in front of either Tony or Peter

[with_diamonds]

This wasn't a set of people that Lucy was all that familiar with. Thalia was here, and a couple others, but for the most part, despite her best efforts to relax for a while (that she had to admit were actually working), she still wasn't entirely sure she fit here. Another familiar face among the crowd was, then, entirely welcome, and she smiled broadly as she headed to Chase's side, glass in hand. Of all the people that had left, he was one of the few who'd remained, and although she wasn't really letting herself think about that now, the fact remained that she was never less grateful for his presence because of it

[apoorupbringing]

Chase grinned at Lucy, the warm, familiar smile of someone one step closer than a friend, and nodded. He pulled another long drag from the joint, then scooped Lucy up in a messy, teasing hug and shotgunned her, still smiling against her mouth as he did.

[with_diamonds]

It was all Lucy could do not to laugh at the suddenness of it, the simple fact that she had to inhale keeping her from it even as she slid an arm around Chase in turn. Somewhere, it occurred to her that she was probably violating some obvious rule of engagement or something, but for the moment, that didn't matter to her. They were just two people sharing a hit from a joint, the familiar burn pleasant before she exhaled towards the ceiling, then grinned at him. "Nice to see you, too."

[lady_tubbington]

When Brittany hears about the party, she's there before she can even think about why all of her glorious '80's clothing has turned into stripes and broken clocks and those butt-cages. Yeah, they're fabulous in their own way, but Brittany has built her empire on stolen acid washes and cutting down her mom's mom pants into something more inappropriate. She likes to make a scene as much as the next teenager with an overactive imagination and an undernourished understanding of -- well, anything.

The coat comes off the second she's through the door, and it's Brittany, bitch. She may have confused steampunk for 1880's bar whore (something Santana once told her: they're the great-great grandmother of present-day bar-skanks, just post-women's suffrage -- which, by the way, sounds awful to Brittany because women should never suffer), but since she's just there to find a beat and dance to it, she figures she doesn't even have to be wearing anything at all

[straightupbitch]

It took her a while to come to terms with the loss of her wardrobe, compiled carefully over months of scavenging for items to her taste, but ultimately, Santana realized that the sooner she came to accept it, the sooner she could get creative with these new trends. Props to all these really old people for bringing about the age of the corset, and with it the age of shameless boob display, but the long skirts and sleeves and general covering up of everything else would have to go. Her outfit tonight is comprised mostly of what would be considered undergarments, back in the day, but it's downright modest compared to what she might wear to a party like this in her own time period. In the end, however, everything comes down to the hotness scale, which, frankly, she is owning. Not as well as Brittany, however, although those may be Santana's unofficial girlfriend goggles speaking. Girl looks goodHow they were separated in the first place, Santana can't remember, but she pushes and shoves her way through the crowd until she's back in

[lady_tubbington]

Santana! Brittany giggles as she pinky-twirls her kinda-girlfriend. The dance floor and the chimney sweep's joint have her practically on another planet; add Santana to that and she's about to die of happiness. The music is like the moon and she's the ocean, swaying and crashing, so she guesses that makes Santana the shore. This image seems perfect to her, so she tilts her head back with a laugh of pure joy before she drapes her arms over Santana's shoulders.

When her eyes open, she notices they've swirled themselves quite a bit over from where they started, and there's something above them. She gasps, "Santana, look!" She's laughing again, pointing up to the mistletoe that is perfectly centered above them.

[straightupbitch]

Presently, Santana is straddling the line between sober and impaired, leaning just far enough over the sober line that she has the presence of mind to care whether they're seen. As it happens, she's also just sober enough to reason her way around that very fear. It's dim, it's loud, and no one is paying attention to them anyway. Sure, that might change once they start macking on one another in the middle of the dance floor, but it's not a party without hot chicks making out under the convenient hold of mistletoe. (And if that's not widely recognized as party law yet, it well should be.) Perhaps the factor working most in their favor, however, is the sense of animosity that wouldn't exist back in Lima, where everyone knows everyone else and all of their mothers (and Rachel Berry's two dads) are begrudging friends who sit together on the PTA. Most of these people don't know Santana's name, or Brittany's, and the reverse is probably just as true. So, without further ado: "On it," she says, with a smirk that transforms into a genuine