Say When (A New Year's Brunch)

[eliotwaugh]

Eliot had been warned by various people that New Year's often brings some kind of supernatural mischief to Darrow, and this news had only made him more determined to stick to his plan. No power of god or man or eldritch entity place-spirit or army of fish people will prevent him from throwing a damn party. 

It made sense, really, and part of him wishes he'd done something like this before now. He needn't frame it as a sort of surrender to this imprisonment, but rather just indulging in something frivolous because, as far as his understanding of the metaphysics goes, none of this really counts. So why shouldn't he enjoy it? He's been here long enough to decorate the apartment some, and it really is a marvel the amount of things available through Nile. There's more comfortable furniture, potted plants, and a series of apothecary cabinets and display cases for magical components that give the whole place the air of some eccentric explorer's gallery of curiosities. 

He's even managed to get enough appliances that the little kitchen is decently functional, and has spent a few days stocking up and preparing for what he hopes will a successful brunch. He has enough eggs to feed an army. There will be copious crepes. There will be mimosas for days. 

Eliot's used to working through a wicked hangover this time of year, so he built that into consideration in his prep time. Thanks to the night's adventure, though, he spends his downtime sober and scrubbing mer-blood off of himself, and still feels a bit frazzled by the time the first guests arrive.

[It's time for brunch! Brunch is a state of mind, not an actual timeframe, so please feel free to have your pups show up whenever in the day, honestly. Tag in, tag around, chase the memory of merman horror away with a mimosa, air your grievances and dirty laundry in the neutral ground of Eliot's apartment. This is a safe space. For Drama.]

Comments

[formicine]

Blue can't help but smile at that image. "It's a common name, too," she points out. "I bet you got a couple of confused Alexes fleeing gooey fish men." She refuses to call them mermen. That's an atrocity of the imagination.

"Kagura and planning for ages? I'm hearing big romantic gesture, here." She gestures at him for details.

[littleorphanalien]

"Hey, what can I say, I shout a good name," he quips.

He figures that she's gonna hear about this from Alex at some point soon, and it's not like she can know by looking at him. With his hand being the way it is, it's not like he can wear a ring, but he gives Blue a confiding smile as he leans in. "I asked Alex to marry me last night, amongst the fleeing gooey fish men."

It's definitely not the most romantic proposal, but it had been theirs.

[formicine]

She snorts. "Remind me to avoid your room at Kagura," she teases back. Then he's leaning in, though, and her eyes go wide and more serious and excitement.

"You -- wait, did you really? He said yes, right?" Of course he said yes; you barely have to meet Alex to figure out that he's crazy about Michael. Well, that, and she assumes he wouldn't be at brunch being a goof if Alex had said no. "Please tell me you asked him literally in the middle of fish goo."

What an image.

[littleorphanalien]

"Once I found him, yeah," Michael says, like he has a right to be irritable about the fact that he'd taken so long to find Alex, but he's beaming. "And yeah, we're going back to Kagura tonight to celebrate," he adds, his smile only getting bigger.

He snorts, and it hadn't been right where the fish men were, but it felt pretty close. "We were on the pier overlooking all the fish goo, but yeah. His prosthetic was rough, I was panicked, but I'd been planning to ask him for months. I wasn't gonna let fish things ruin that."

[formicine]

She grins right back. "Well, congratulations!" Most of her friends that have been married here have either been married already, or very shortly after she met them; she hasn't been here for very many engagements among her friends and she finds herself delighted for them. Blue laughs at his afterthought. "Don't get yourself arrested for noise complaints," she says, with a failed attempt at a deadpan.

"Honestly, I think there's something weirdly more romantic about that than it being perfect?" She sips at her mimosa only to realize it's well and truly dead, and she puts it down on a table with just enough oomph to make a statement and not damage the glass. "It's romantic that you planned everything, but life isn't perfect, you know? Love isn't perfect. Why not propose in the middle of man-eating mermaids."

[littleorphanalien]

Michael's feeling pretty bashful and good at the same time, beaming away. He knows that Alex said he'd be here too, but later, so she can offer her own congratulations when he comes, but for now, he's happy to accept them on his behalf.

"And hey, we know how to behave."

By which he means, he knows how to order a room and ask if it's soundproofed to avoid that kind of thing. "Our lives definitely were never perfect before here, but this time, I decided it wasn't gonna stop me." He's tired of not being with Alex, like that, especially when he's stopped walking away. "I'm pretty sure Alex is gonna ask you to be there with us. So, you know, hope you can rock a suit," he says, as if a glance at her doesn't prove she can.

[formicine]

She levels a sure sort of raised eyebrow look at him, partly out of dubiousness and partly because she's pretty sure getting pulled out of space and time to, miraculously, the same pocket universe, figuring out your shit, and getting engaged in the middle of attacking mermen deserves some noise complaints.

"That's good," she says, and smiles genuinely. It tugs somewhere just north of her stomach, but a very young, petulant version of her reminds her she was supposed to never fall in love anyway. "This place, it can--" she starts, faltering a little, but he forges on and she pauses.

"Did you just pre-invite me to be your guys' grooms...maid? Is that what that was?" She beams, surprised and delighted away from more wistful thoughts. "You know, I have not often been the one in the suit, and I think that is well past due to change."

[littleorphanalien]

He shrugs, not seeing the big deal. "I mean, if you wanna be? I know Alex really likes you, and I know enough from Isobel's wedding and her planning them to know that the one you want to be happy is the one you allow to make the plans."

He's not calling Alex the bride, but man, was it a long and circuitous path around it.

"I mean, keep in mind we don't have a date," he warns, sipping on his mimosa. "We still gotta make a lot of decisions about how this thing looks, but the people part is easy, for me." Because Michael's got people and he holds them fiercely close and that's not changing.

[formicine]

"I'd love to be," she says, and even if he doesn't think it's a big deal to be important enough to someone to have them want you in their wedding, she's still warmed by it.

That roundabout path to not saying happy wife happy life does make her grin. "Well, I think your wedding party has to help you plan, traditionally, so you know. I'm available for venue hunting, or whatever."

[littleorphanalien]

"Bachelor parties? Cuz, I mean, there's one non-negotiable thing happening, but other than that, I think we're pretty open to anything," Michael says, but he wouldn't mind someone planning it for him. On the off chance he ever got hitched back home, he'd assumed Isobel would plan it all for him.

Fuck if he was gonna let Max ruin a bachelor party.

"I trust you to make it a plenty wild night."

[formicine]

She laughs. Blue hasn't ever pictured herself as planning someone's bachelor party, but then again, there's the fact that this is hardly likely to be a wedding with someone making ball and chain jokes and that most of those she's met who've worked as a stripper in Darrow did it because they enjoyed it -- benefits of having an allowance guaranteed by the city.

Both thoughts make her consider that she might want to ask Kavinsky for wild night-having advice, which is ...weird.

"You know, I've never planned one before? But I'm always up for a challenge," she answers honestly, grinning.

[littleorphanalien]

"I've never been to one and never had one." He doesn't count Isobel's, because being forced to go to a spa and do all those things would've been awful, but he'd been a bad brother and bailed on her, then deciding not to go to Noah's.

Maybe he should have figured Noah out back then, but he'd only been avoiding everyone because the wedding was making him feel sad and miserable, that his life got fucked to pieces while hers was flourishing. "Besides, you could just play Panic! songs for Alex all night and he'd be giddy."

"Hey, maybe you can help me dress as the guy, the main guy," he says, suggestively, because that would be an excellent pre-wedding gift, he thinks.

[formicine]

"Great! Then you'll have no expectations," she replies brightly, and grins, then examines her empty mimosa. "Do you want another drink? I'm feeling irresponsible."

Blue ducks through the others milling about and returns with hers refilled and one for him, grinning at his deadpan about Alex's music taste. She's about to retort something about even finding emo bands from home when Michael's suggestion makes her cough on her drink.

"Save a horse, ride a cowboy?" she suggests back. "Is that where we're going with this?"

"You could strip to Panic! at the Disco, that'd be an...event..."

[littleorphanalien]

"Sure," he agrees, because he's always down for another drink. Morning beers are a pretty normal thing for him, even if he mostly uses acetone with Alex, but at the Airstream, he'd just finish anything lying around. Reaching for a new mimosa, he smirks at her suggestion.

"I mean, I'd be doing the riding, and I don't think there's many songs about riding an Air Force Captain."

Though shit, it's reminding him that maybe he'd like to go back to that, roleplay a little, and make those reunion dreams come back alive.

"Hey, you got any suggestions, I'm down. I'm only giving the one lapdance, so I only need one song."