VELVET ROOM PARTY

[finchmods]

VELVET ROOM PARTY

All of the students who RSVPed on Khalil's journal post fall asleep surprisingly early Saturday night, some recognizing their own fatigue and calling it a night early while others drift off accidentally on couches or at desks. Regardless of how difficult they normally find it, this sleep is deep and comes over them quickly and completely. When their eyes open next, they're not in their dorms anymore. Instead, they're... in an old school roller rink? The rink itself is large and has a disco ball suspended above it; music is pumping through the speaker system, though the DJ booth off to the side of the rink is vacant. There's a concession stand stocked with various snacks, different kids of booze, and soda, alongside which there are tables to sit at. Off to one side there's a circle of low, ottoman-like seats for Spin the Bottle, and nearby is a utility closet, complete with broom to totally get in your way, for Seven Minutes in Heaven. There are also a few 'party rooms' if you need a little bit of privacy, but the doors don't lock and there are windows in the doors, so, you know. Everything looks pretty typical, except for the blue door at the far end of the building where the entrance would be.

As at the other parties, the students find that they're not wearing what they were when they went to bed. Now, they're dressed in (primarily blue) clothes that are a little bit retro. Like, 80's and 90's retro. There's an abundance of neon, tight fitting materials, and loud patterns, all of which, honestly, look pretty great under the lights on the rink. The party's host, meanwhile, wears a striped referee shirt with deep blue instead of black stripes, and has a whistle hanging around his neck that's going to be a little ineffectual, what with his mask and all. When the partygoers arrive he's standing behind the counter at the skate rental area, arms spread out and braced on the counter. Come check out a pair of skates and get to skating! Or, like, whatever you want to do, he guesses.

Early in the evening, Khalil approaches Thalia Mitchell with a request... can she name his friend? Alongside him is the mysterious Velvet Room denizen Thalia had seen before. Though her body language suggests she's not entirely pleased with it, they settle on Joni (Mitchell) as her name, and she spends most of the party wandering around and avoiding speaking too much with anyone. Meredith Rhydderch overhears a conversation with Khalil and Joni, where Khalil suggests she personally apologize to Marzio Sarno, Slade Winchester, Russell Reeve, and Luke Pokorny for scaring them. She refuses, but does at least take the time to sneak a glance at each of them.

StB & 7MiH

Adam Ho StB #1: Rose StB #2: Sullivan 7MiH: Dustin	Atticus Starling StB #1: Lyle StB #2: Neal 7MiH: Slade	Blake Hasenkamp StB #1: Dustin StB #2: Monet 7MiH: Josephine	Clarissa Day StB #1: Pearl StB #2: Sullivan 7MiH: Venus
Conway Loxton StB #1: Kodi StB #2: Slade 7MiH: Justice	Dustin Espinosa StB #1: Blake StB #2: Marzio 7MiH: Adam	Eli Gardner StB #1: Liam StB #2: Thalia 7MiH: Petra	Flint Chambers 7MiH: Sullivan
Hadlee Loxton StB #1: Henry StB #2: Meredith 7MiH: Rose	Hamsi Khan StB #1: Jude StB #2: Noah	Henry Arany StB #1: Hadlee StB #2: Neal 7MiH: Lyle	Josephine Linville StB #1: Petra StB #2: Slade 7MiH: Blake
Jude Tobin StB #1: Hamsi StB #2: Venus 7MiH: Thalia	Justice Bishop StB #1: Lillian StB #2: Luke 7MiH: Conway	Kodi Hansen StB #1: Conway StB #2: Zinnia 7MiH: Martin	Liam Blumenthal StB #1: Eli StB #2: Lyle
Lillian Armstrong StB #1: Justice StB #2: Petra 7MiH: Suzy	Luke Pokorny StB #1: Mason StB #2: Justice 7MiH: Noah	Lyle Hemmings StB #1: Atticus StB #2: Liam 7MiH: Henry	Martin Geary StB #1: Marzio StB #2: Pearl 7MiH: Kodi
Marzio Sarno StB #1: Dustin StB #2: Martin	Mason Chambers StB #1: Luke StB #2: Venus 7MiH: Meredith	Meredith Rhydderch StB #1: Hadlee StB #2: Noah 7MiH: Mason	Monet Romilly StB #1: Blake StB #2: Zinnia 7MiH: Neal
Neal Valentine StB #1: Atticus StB #2: Henry 7MiH: Monet	Noah Dressler StB #1: Hamsi StB #2: Meredith 7MiH: Luke	Pearl Kline StB #1: Clarissa StB #2: Martin 7MiH: Zinnia	Petra Warren-Yates StB #1: Josephine StB #2: Lillian 7MiH: Eli
Rose Chapman StB #1: Adam StB #2: Thalia 7MiH: Hadlee	Slade Winchester StB #1: Conway StB #2: Josephine 7MiH: Atticus	Sullivan Sinclair StB #1: Adam StB #2: Clarissa 7MiH: Flint	Suzy Choi 7MiH: Lillian
Thalia Mitchell StB #1: Eli StB #2: Rose 7MiH: Jude	Venus Rosales StB #1: Jude StB #2: Mason 7MiH: Clarissa	Zinnia Howe StB #1: Kodi StB #2: Monet 7MiH: Pearl

» SKATE RENTAL: Khalil is handing out skates when he's not 'policing' the rink! Fill out the form to see what, uh, unique skates or blades you get!

» THE RINK: No one will yell at you if you walk out in your sneakers to dance in the center, but it is more fun if you skate, you know? The DJ booth alongside the rink has a computer hooked up with access to a lot of music, if you want to pick some beats.

» CONCESSION STAND & TABLES: Stocked with just about anything you could want food-wise and drink-wise. As usual, a couple of the items are blue that shouldn't be, like the popcorn. Right next to the concession stand are tables where you can take a seat, chill out, and stuff your face with everything you grabbed.

» PARTY GAMES: A small circle of ottoman-like seats has been set up for party games off to the side of the tables! Spin the Bottle and Seven Minutes in Heaven are the mainstays, but it's easy enough to start your own games, too! Nearby there's a tiny utility closet that's a tight squeeze for two people.

» PARTY ROOMS: There are three side rooms set up with tables and lots of blue balloons, like they've been set up for birthday parties. The doors on these rooms don't lock, and there are small windows on the doors, so they're only slightly private.

» END OF THE NIGHT: At some point (god, how long has it been?), there's a feeling of restlessness in the air, as though night is coming to a close and they'll be waking up soon. Best to get your last hurrahs in!

» OOC - QUESTIONS, COMMENTS, CONCERNS!

Please note: Students arrive with nothing they had on them in the real world (including their journals) - so no journaling while here! If you can find Khalil, you can ask him for things, though.

Comments

Dustin & Lucy

[highercalling]

Dustin's prediction had been accurate. You can't blame him, exactly; it's hard to hide in a roller rink, and even harder when you're dressed in various shades of neon blue. Still, and in his usual fashion, he gives it his best effort — slipping into an empty party room and tucking himself away behind a table and some balloons and, just in front of him, a cardboard cutout unnecessarily advertising this very same venue.

It's all perfectly innocent —he's playing a children's game— but there's something about this plan that's making his heart beat faster than it ever has in the Shadow World. Which was probably a sign, he knows. He shouldn't be doing this. He shouldn't be doing this.

He... settles down and waits for Lucy to find him.

Dustin & Lucy

[lucillefer]

It takes nearly two whole songs, the search limit promised, but Lucy is single-minded and intense when there's something she wants. Even when she's been drinking, and she has: enough to have lost her little plaid blazer and torn off her annoying thigh-highs. Both are somewhere on the floor behind the concession stand.

Onlookers might remember seeing her tomorrow, progressing calmly through the establishment like a wine-carrying terminator. This party room is the last place to look, and she closes the door behind her with a careful click. It's really only in this moment, with her back to the window, that she remembers exactly what she's doing.

She takes a hefty drink and progresses quietly across the floor, kneeling next to the cutout, and peers around it just as the fuzzy drumbeat fades from outside.

Dustin's there, of course.

"I win," Lucy whispers, grinning. She crawls into his hiding space like a spider, dragging the half empty wine bottle after her.

Dustin & Lucy

[highercalling]

Dustin laughs quietly and moves just a little to the left, making room for Lucy and her bottle of wine. The floor is too smooth and clean to be truly real, and his fingers slide easily over the wood and nails and plastic edges of the cheap, blue-grey rug.

"I knew you would," he replies. Actually, it took longer than he'd expected, and he can't help but feel a soft, shameful flare of pride.

Dustin & Lucy

[lucillefer]

Lucy settles with her legs folded beneath her, teetering a little. She's tipsy enough that she laughs a little before speaking, darkly amused with the situation she's orchestrated and forced herself into. If Dustin is observant, he might detect a nervy quiver in it. It seems that her heart is beating very hard under her careless act.

"Is that why you agreed to play? Maybe you did want to lose."

There's silence after, and a swell of new music from outside. Lucy swallows a handful of other words with a mouthful of wine, smiling at him with her eyes, then holds out the bottle for Dustin.

"I saw you," she murmurs. "Playing another game. Was it fun?"

Dustin & Lucy

[highercalling]

Most days, "observant" would be a fair description, but ... not tonight. Tonight, Dustin can't quite bear to pay Lucy his full attention; instead, he glances at her sidelong, then reaches out to touch the cardboard figure that separates them from the rest of the world. Three, four fingers is enough to push it over, but his touch is delicate enough that nothing moves.

"I wouldn't call this 'plain sight,'" he murmurs. There's a beat, a half-second of blissful nothing before the room fills with the inappropriate sound of jaunty, Phil Collins horns. Dustin accepts the wine and takes a grateful swallow. Someone should probably cut him off.

He knows exactly what she's talking about. He just doesn't know what to say. There's hard, heavy feeling at the pit of his stomach: stone soup less satisfying than he'd initially expected. "I—" Dustin looks down at the bottle. "I'm not sure yet."

Dustin & Lucy

[lucillefer]

Lucy stares at Dustin's fingers against the cardboard for a moment too long. Then she looks at him, the way he holds the wine. It's hard to tell what the expression on his face means. Not just because it's slightly dark in here.

Her own is soft in its watchfulness, the way she always finds distasteful, too honest. But wasn't that what she'd intended, bringing him here? She'd fallen asleep trying to think of what true things she'd say when she prevailed, uncovering him in a corner of Khalil's dreamscape.

But it's just "Oh," she mumbles, simply, after a moment. She swallows her heart instead of wine, and her fingers shift across the smooth floor, toward him very slightly.

"I won't tease you, then." It still kind of sounds like teasing, though, in Lucy's scratchy drunken whisper. "Even if you've ruined what I thought I'd say next."

Dustin & Lucy

[highercalling]

That's enough to make Dustin look over at her, and for real this time. He holds out the bottle, an apologetic offering.

"Oh no," he says, and he knows she's teasing. He is too, ostensibly, and yet there's so much genuine dismay in the statement that it's honestly a little sickening. "Say it now. I want to know."

Dustin & Lucy

[lucillefer]

Dustin says I want to know. Lucy is going to come up a return that is easy, barbed and distracting, but he's looking back at her in a very genuine way that her devil cannot match. So she just takes the bottle and drinks from it. Fuck it. Chaos.

"I thought you'd say something either way," she tells him, wiping her mouth with the back of a pale hand. It still looks wine-stained. Her head whirls. "Yes or no. So either way, I'd tell you a version of the same line. And maybe then, I wouldn't have to tell you plainly that--"

But it's not as simple as she's imagined, even as many times as she has.

Lucy stops. She stares at the floor like she's hoping it will open up beneath her, drawing her index finger along the glass of the bottle, and wills herself to not care. The muffled music makes everything sound underwater and fake. Like we're already dead.

"I want to be the person you kiss," she whispers very softly, frozen in place.

Dustin & Lucy

[highercalling]

Dustin's hand moves to his chest and twists at the polyester of his jacket, some sort of subconscious attempt, perhaps, to hold himself back. It doesn't work. Or, at least, it doesn't for long; for a few milliseconds, there's nothing but perfect stillness in the cover of shadow and the distant wail of catchy gibberish. He doesn't so much as breathe.

Then, he leans forward and with uncharacteristic abruptness, like a fraying rope finally giving way, reaches for the angle of Lucy's jaw. Tilts her head up, hands deceptively steady. Aiming to press his mouth against hers.

Dustin & Lucy

[lucillefer]

Somehow, despite calculations and machinations, Lucy did not anticipate this feeling the way it does. Unbalanced. Her mouth goes dry and she cannot breathe, and those things are not like her. The last person she kissed after Marty, over Thanksgiving break, she bit so hard on a vicious whim that they hissed and pulled away like she was crazy. And she'd only watched them leave.

But she closes her eyes for Dustin, untangles her legs so she can lean closer, into his touch. The distance between them is crossed softly: a brief, questioning kiss that feels like an experiment. A jolt.

Lucy pulls away, only the space of a few inches, to gaze curiously into his eyes. Her hand reaches up to keep his, gently, pressed around the curve of her face. Then she smiles and pushes forward again to kiss him properly.

Dustin & Lucy

[highercalling]

Dustin's heart is beating so fast that he can feel the flutter in his thumbs, in his neck. Maybe Lucy can too. It leaves him dizzy, seeing stars in a way that only ever happens late-late at night and even then, it's rare; Dustin is well-suited to his house and, at his worst tends, to react with a syrup-weighted slowness. Sooner to drown with his eyes wide open than to physically bolt away.

Now, as Lucy's fingers press against the back of his, he wonders what the hell is wrong with him, that he'd ignore so obvious a sign to stop. He can't think of anything worse than this: the brush of her legs, her look on her face, the warm wave of a feeling too terrible to name. It's all very nice, and he'll pay for it later, he thinks as he smiles too and kisses her more deeply this second time.

Dustin & Lucy

[lucillefer]

There's a pleasured sound in the back of Lucy's throat; she doesn't try to hide it, the thrilled shakiness despite how slowly she moves, as if trying to memorize the way he feels. It's a delicious pain, to do this with someone she actually likes: warmth returning to frozen flesh. It makes her feel alive. She wants to crawl in his lap and make him feel that way too.

But she doesn't. His answering smile is burned in the spin of her mind, and so is the clawless affection that pulsed through her, seeing it. At the thought Lucy manages to drag her mouth from his. She presses their foreheads together, nuzzling at him, and whispers scratchily, low and half-giddy.

"You taste of wine." Punctuated with a tiny bite to the lower lip.

"I like ..." You. "It."

Dustin & Lucy

[highercalling]

Dustin laughs, turning his head a little so as not to do it right in Lucy's face.

"Whose fault is that?" he replies, knowing full-well that it was his and his alone. Lucy may have offered him the bottle, but he was the one who decided to drink. It would be wrong to lay the blame at this or any Devil's feet.

Dustin & Lucy

[lucillefer]

Lucy's laugh is dark and light at the same time.

"Yours," she answers, with playful condemnation. Then she wraps her arms around his neck to pull him in again.