Comfort and Joy

[simplestgift]

Who: Come one, come all! ...In formal attire.
What: A Christmas ball, old world style.
When: December 1st, beginning around five in the afternoon and ending when the last person leaves.
Where: The rec center.
Summary: Earth's eighteenth-century peeps are throwing one hell of a party.
Rating: Well, considering no one is serving water? Probably PG-13 for alcohol consumption and the results thereof (there's coffee and hot chocolate!).

The recreation center has been utterly transformed.

The doors open to a host of candles and a warm, old-world smell and feel. The scent of food and spices hangs in the air—mulled wine, wassail, evergreen boughs, fresh bread and roast meat. Cream brocades, simple but elegant, are draped over the walls. Traditional red rugs have been thrown over the floor. Gone are the billiard tables, ping-pong, and foosball. It looks like a different place entirely, every table impeccably dressed with light linen cloths and set with fine china and crystal. At least one-half of the room is cleared and ready for dancers.

The tables are lit with candles, and five chandeliers have been temporarily added to the room for more light, giving the room a golden glow instead of the sterile luminescence of fluorescent lighting. On the tables, boughs of evergreen and holly surround the candles, and mistletoe has been hung discreetly here and there. In one corner of the dancing area, by a large and beautifully decorated fir tree (Buffy’s insistence), the musicians are set up to play, unobtrusive to the diners but essential to the dancers. Leading them is Frederic Chopin himself, and few here can say they have had anyone better play for their pleasure.

Things will begin with a grand dinner late in the afternoon, with a light supper (mostly consisting of cold meats, bread, and other lighter fare) at around nine o’clock. The selection of food on the tables is enormous. Most of it is meat-based and some of it is simply meat. Roast beef with mushrooms, goose in giblet gravy, herbed chicken, baked salmon, and a whole pig are among the choices. There is some hope for vegetarians, though, with spinach mixed with bread crumbs and cheese on small toasts, turnips (or rutabagas if you speak American), onions, carrots, parsnips, mashed potatoes, asparagus in breadcrumbs, and savory onion and wild mushroom pies. There is hot fresh bread and rolls with butter and heaps upon heaps of small mince pies filled with fruit, molasses, and yes, a little minced lamb. Moreover, there are fresh winter fruits like oranges and mikans and many different desserts, such as Christmas pudding, a rum chocolate dessert, and spotted dog with custard. Sit and help yourself. For a complete list of the food offered, take a look here.

Among the drinks throughout the evening are wassail, tea, hot chocolate (less sweet and much more intense than most modern characters would be used to, made with cinnamon, vanilla, and a hint of cayenne pepper), coffee, brandy, wine both mulled and plain, port, sherry, and gallons of rum punch. Even though the food is fantastic, overseen by Jack Aubrey, the conversation is the point of the game, and who knows who they will wind up sitting beside. At the center of each table is placed a pineapple as a sign of welcome and wishes of prosperity.

There is dancing light as the music itself, with Archie Kennedy and Elizabeth Swann teaching the steps of each dance before striking up the music and letting everyone go to town with it. They are poised and elegant but relaxed and seeming to glide as they demonstrate the motions with an effortlessness that comes with years of practice. They were both raised on these dances and this sort of social function and seem completely at home here. The dancing begins after dinner with the minuets and continues after a light supper with some informal English country dances. Anyone unused to dancing like this may find that it’s harder than it looks, but when one gets used to it, it feels very graceful, beautiful, and…fun! The activity will only end when there are too few dancers left to continue, and will continue all night if possible. As dancers pass each other or move hand-in-hand, eye contact can be made, quiet words exchanged, subtle (or not) messages passed as they spin through the room, or perhaps the room spins while they remain still.

It might depend on how much they’ve had to drink.

Those who do not wish to dance have other activities to participate in. In one corner, card tables are set up with multiple decks of cards stacked up, and there is even a box or two of dominoes and a handful of dice. The tables themselves are round and made of polished rosewood or mahogany. This area is well-lit and on the opposite end of the room from the musicians and dancers, probably as a mercy to the tone-deaf Horatio Hornblower who loves cards but can’t abide music. Here, discreet (or indiscreet) gambling is inevitable. There may be no money here, but that doesn’t mean there’s nothing to wager.

Are you lingering at the dining tables, drinking and talking loud and laughing with friends, or will you shyly sit and watch the dancing and games and hope to be invited in? Are you sitting quietly alone and listening to the music as your foot taps on its own, or are you unable to sit still and ready to dance all night if they’ll let you? Are you playing cards with a few new acquaintances, or are you hanging on someone’s arm and helping them cheat?

Whatever you do, have fun.

Comments

[herotypical]

"That's what I'm counting on."

She toyed with the edge of one sleeve. "Did he tell you what he was off to do?"

[tehoniongirl.livejournal.com]

She shook her head. "No. I didn't even know he was leaving until the morning he was gone."

[herotypical]

"Cargo. Loading and unloading. Ship stuff. So he's at least been half in his element."

[tehoniongirl.livejournal.com]

"That's...that's safe, right?"

[herotypical]

Her smile tightened.

"Y-yeah. Low combat. He was gonna write to me if he could but he hasn't so I guess..." A huff. "He'll be fine. God. He's like...what? Forty? Two? Forty-two? And not dead yet." Except dead twice. "He'll be here. He better be. If I have to..."

A swallow. "He's gotta see the dress. Archie helped me pick it and all. Just for him. He's gotta go nonverbal."

[tehoniongirl.livejournal.com]

She reached over, her fingers closing around Buffy's. "He will. He'll be absolutely speechless."

[herotypical]

"Oh...boy. I've got it bad, Jilly. Head over heels over heart."

Another shy smile. You'd swear she was walking down an aisle. "Heaven help me. I always fall for the worst kinds. But he's..."

Was he different? God. She hoped so.

[tehoniongirl.livejournal.com]

Jilly shook her head, smiling softly. "I've seen worst kinds. He's something very different."

She stopped short of complimenting him further only because, proud scoundrel that he was, she was pretty sure he wouldn't appreciate it if she didn't.

"And you have to know he's crazy for you, too."

[herotypical]

Oh. She knew. It was hard not to. And yet Buffy found herself very quick to displace that certainty. Displace it all entirely on their newest housemate.

"Look at her. Elizabeth Swann." Buffy nodded at the woman across the room. "Cheekbones for days." A sigh.

[tehoniongirl.livejournal.com]

Turning, Jilly followed her gaze to the dance floor where Elizabeth moved elegantly across the floor. "Yes, but-"

She trailed off as she looked back at Buffy, an eyebrow arching. "...You aren't worried about her and...Jack...are you?"

She might have been a little less incredulous if she'd had any idea of their history.

[herotypical]

"He calls her his king. Pirate King. She's one. A pirate. Like him."

And it wasn't even the heart of the issue but Buffy would not be spilling that first of Jack's deaths to anyone soon.

[tehoniongirl.livejournal.com]

That gets a bit of a sputtering sound as Jilly realizes what was just said. "She's... really?"

Turning her incredulous gaze to their graceful housemate, she stares for a moment before the first of many questions comes to mind. "...Does Horatio know?"

[herotypical]

"No clue. I mean -- I don't think she's hiding it but...but I've known about her for a long, long time. Maybe I shouldn't have said anything..."

A frown. "Should he not know?"

[tehoniongirl.livejournal.com]

"What?"

She blinked, then thought back to her own question. "Oh, no...I mean...I don't know. She just stayed on the Britannia, and I know Archie had a hard enough time convincing him that Jack was okay." A fact she wasn't sure Horatio actually agreed with, even now.

"...She doesn't seem very...pirate-like." But it's not a disbelieving tone. Jilly knows a lot about things not being what they seem.

[herotypical]

"She didn't start out a pirate. I know there was some kinda pre-contracty wackiness between her and James and...wait. I'm gossiping. That's probably not what I should be doing. Point is? Jack and I are supposed to be like oil and water. He's the oil, I'm the water. And then there's her. And I suspect she's as slick as they come and..."

And the way he looked at her sometimes. "They carry the same club cards. That's gotta stand for something."

[tehoniongirl.livejournal.com]

"Buffy...I'm an artist. That doesn't mean that I'll be with someone just because they're an artist."

[herotypical]

"...But you'd have to be with someone who values art, right? And not someone who was kinda-mostly-often offended by your art. And what your art did to other people. And all the legal grey-areas of your art."

[tehoniongirl.livejournal.com]

She gave the other woman a small smile. "I don't know how legally grey my art could be considered..." She shook her head. "But I get it. And I don't know that there's really an easy answer...except that Jack's legally grey-areas are usually more mischievous than harmful."

[herotypical]

A soft sound suggested that despite all of the love and good will, she might not be so certain that the pirate's activities have tended mostly towards the non-harmful.

"Whatever the result? They share their legally grey-area. And me? I'm..." A soft sigh. "Official. Law-like. It's...never mind.

Now's not the time, right?"

[tehoniongirl.livejournal.com]

She squeezed Buffy's hand sympathetically. "You're you, and that's all you need to be." Later, she might remind her of how upset she'd been at Jack suspecting her of harboring feelings for old flames. Now, though, Buffy is right. This isn't the time.

[herotypical]

"...Maybe you're the one with the right idea. Just don't bother with the menfolk. Have any of them here even caught your eye?"

[tehoniongirl.livejournal.com]

She laughed. "It's not really a...conscious choice. I guess I'm usually just too busy to think about it." As well as an overactive imagination for all the ways it could go wrong.

Releasing Buffy's hand, she crossed her arms around herself, looking over the crowded hall. "Besides, if anything is proof that you two care about each other, it's how you've managed to stick it out despite shifts. Ups and downs included. Finding that... that's special." Nevermind if anyone had caught her eye. That comes dangerously close to letting herself consider that type of relationship at all.

[herotypical]

She waved off the specialness. Oh, she knew -- there was something spectacularly solid and dependable about the fact that the Malnosso could throw almost any curve-ball in Buffy and Jack's way and they need only seek each other out in the treehouse. Take the time to talk it out. She, herself, had never before given so much consideration for a partner. This relationship was the culmination of learning from all her other mistakes. It was touch and go, now and then, but they were doing rather well -- given both of their histories.

But Buffy didn't want to talk about her and Jack. "Too busy? This is Luceti. You've been here...how long now? Almost a year. And not a single eye caught? Maybe you just have better standards than the rest of us."

[tehoniongirl.livejournal.com]

She shook her head slightly. "Believe me. I'm the last person to talk to good relationship standards."

Almost a year. Back home, this conversation would have been with Sophie and Wendy...and there would have been any number of boys pointed out and laughed off and denied. And they would have understood...but it would have been...safe.

Part of her is back there, picturing the friends she'd left behind, but part of her is very much in the ballroom with Buffy and not even realizing how easy it is to slip into the same patterns.

"Most of the time I spend is with Archie, who might as well be family, and Horatio, who's married." The first two come easily as she obligingly counts the people she knows off on her fingers. For each, there's a reason not even to consider...all too quickly accessible for it to really be the first time it's come to mind.

"Jack Aubrey is married, I hardly know Stephen," and she had an odd sense about him from what she did know, if not an unfavorable one, "and nearly every other guy I know is too old, too young, married, or about to be."

She smiled. "It's okay, though. I wasn't even really dating, back home. I haven't really had a relationship in years." Certainly none that had lasted long.

[herotypical]

"Give it time. You're a sweet girl. They'll be chomping at the bit to bring you flowers. Once we get a few less married gents. Though -- as a point of interest? Just how old is too old?"

Sub-quest: find a good match for Jilly. She did not realize that this might be a terrible idea.