multiversallogs | St. Peter In Chains: The Collection. [OPEN!]

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St. Peter In Chains: The Collection. [OPEN!]

Who: Penelope Lane, her models, her muses, her admirers, the curious and the critics. ANYONE. EVERYONE. GET IN HERE!!
What: Penelope's long-awaited runway show! Finally!
Where: St. Peter In Chains, abandoned cathedralish church.
When: Friday, June 29th! Eveningtime. Show starts at 7pm and goes... well. Until everyone isn't there anymore, I guess!! For whatever reason.
Notes: IMPORTANT: There's going to be a bunch of subthreads for different parts of the night. Feel free to tag around in them as you want! I'd like fabulous things to happen here, people. Fabulous. Things.
EDIT: NOW WITH ADDED TERROR!! SEE LINK BELOW!!
Warnings: Scary things, NPC death, injuries... horrors!!

The venue has been done up quite well for the occasion, all things considered. The old pews that were still salvageable have been repurposed and rearranged to face the aisle down the center of the enormous main room, where a raised runway has been set up. Lighting and temporary walls, and even an audio system have been brought in and installed for the occasion, and the impressive wreathed columns have been dramatically lit from below to emphasize the height of the room.

All told, it looks like it cost absolute scads of money to renovate an abandoned space to this level of elegance; whether this is actually true or not is largely immaterial. As with so much of society, it's the appearance of the thing that matters most, not the reality of it. Perhaps that's a statement Penelope Lane is making intentionally. Everyone knows the designer is one of the most outspoken members of her cohort, after all, and not one to misrepresent herself.

And she is, tonight, for one, brief, shining moment, entirely in control. Take plenty of pictures; it won't last long.

AND NOW: THE REAL SHOW BEGINS

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Coming here was not actually Nuray's idea so much as the fellow she's been seen around town with over the past few weeks, but neither is she objecting — she had, in fact, rather been looking forward to it, and it certainly hadn't disappointed.

She's dressed more or less how she always is, maybe a little more done-up than usual; she can't actually get away with wearing fur every day, that's part of why she was looking forward to this. Her hair's done up in victory rolls, eyes lengthened with cateye liner, and her nails are matte black.

After extracting herself from her gentleman's side, she sidles around the room, casually inserting herself into conversations she thinks are interesting. She's fairly good at this mingling thing.

Ilde isn't in the midst of an interesting conversation, although she'd like to be; she's just curious, remembering Nuray from an early morning outing in Mog Hill, how awkward she'd felt and how the encounter had put her strangely at ease. She's moving in Nuray's direction before she's even really finished thinking it through, which isn't that unusual for her--

“Hello, again.”

"Um." He could lie, but then he'd feel bad. Also, Ilde has known him for longer than twelve seconds, so she'd see right through it anyway. Yes. But it isn't — wasn't — so bad. Too many lights, could barely see anything. That's true, it had helped a lot to not have to look at anyone else's face.

He nods, indicating her dress. Is that one of hers?

Ilde decides, at the very last minute with an aborted finger-twitch that would have been an ill-advised bit of speculation, that it wouldn't be at all helpful to wax poetic about how alarming she'd find it to be aware of how many people must be watching and unable to see them for herself. If Penelope wants him to walk for her again, she's not going to be the one who gives him something to chew over until he can't get up there another time.

So. Instead: It is! She had a bit of say about what I wore tonight. A while in advance, though-- you know how busy she's been. In the lead up, with everything that's going into the show.

His reaction is the same it always is when complimented from someone he knows versus a stranger whose motivations are unknown, and therefore make him nervous. Embarrassed/pleased, he pulls a face, self-conscious. He can't do anything about blushing. "Thank you."

Touching he tolerates much better from her than from strangers, although like always his gestures are fleeting, anxious. "Umm." He would go on to say something stupid but hopefully supportive that would make his employer look good, here, but apparently does not feel obligated this time. Fun is not what he would call it but he doesn't want to give the impression that he hates being here, either. "Well, I survived? So there's that."

He had a few days of mild panic over the issue of being properly out in all these ways, but logic (the mass media in Baedal isn't like it is on Earth, his primary following is centered in a sex club who would in no way be deterred by any of this) and something else entirely (mine go away) soothed those impulses.

"I've been to a few but they always sort of sucked," he replies in kind, "Huge overblown press affairs with watered-down work, and I had terrible seats." Jae smiles. "This is better."

You ever get the feeling that life doesn't get weirder than this?

Logan had watched the show from the shadows, although to be fair, he'd watched the audience more than the pretty models wandering down the runway, because that was more comfortably his job. For the sake of the event, he has a sports jacket thrown over a button-down, all neutral and unremarkable colours, the angles of their cuts advertising some respect for the function and his employer's participation in it. From there, it goes a bit downhill in only semi-new jeans and some brown Chelsea boots, but the crowd is eclectic enough that it doesn't matter.

He'd stolen some food off a passing server's plate, sweeping delicate looking "nibbles" into his paws to eat less to appreciate their delicacy and more to stem off the edge of his usual appetite, and the last piece of toasted brioche with some sort of pesto and raw meat folded upon it is eaten in one bite without much in the way of tasting. He wipes his hands clean of crumbs just as there's a break in the flow of people coming to talk to Nuala (and everyone who does gets a good and hard once over from Wolverine, as if to counterbalance the princess's own enthusiasm).

"How're you holding up?" he thinks to ask.

It's really for the best that nobody remind him how many people are staring at him at any given moment. At least here, he can hide behind someone else.

Oh, I like it, it's pretty. Then a pause, and his face is like... yep. Yep, he knows. He really can't complain about any of this considering she's paying him ridiculous amounts of money to wear clothes and walk, skills he mastered at about the age of two, so. It pays off, yeah? This, he gestures around them, is amazing kind of.

The glance she gives him is warm, absent-minded; between Logan, Integra and other Hellsing agents in attendance this evening, she's allowing her safety to be their concern and not something that gives her so much as a moment's pause in the midst of all this. A generous assessment might correctly call that trust in their competence, as well as casual entitlement.

“To tell you the truth,” in an almost confiding way, engagingly girlish almost as to contrast not only her earlier performance but also her own outfit, “I find myself much more in my element here than in 'walking' for Miss Lane.”

She's a politician, after all.

Ilde almost laughs, not unkindly, at the expression on his face; she at least is disinclined to look down on him for just about anything, though admittedly if she wanted to try something like that she'd need a fucking ladder.

I do love being here. It's odd, though, isn't it? Our cohort feels so small, and. Now it doesn't. Because it isn't just their cohort participating tonight - they feel sometimes like an island in the city, and it's an interesting reminder that they aren't. Odd context. Maybe the perfect sort of context, Ilde doesn't know.

That gets a laugh, almost voiceless and a little sympathetic, and about as light as the hug she'd briefly subjected him to before withdrawing again, both hands coming to hold her champagne. "So far so good," she says, raising glass to sip from, only very lightly pecking at the things available, including the people. "You'll be more optimistic when it's over, maybe."

A darting, bright eyed glance around at all these people. Who are even all these people! Benji is one of them and thus shares none of Wolfgang's horror, but it's certainly surprising.

"Mm, until Penelope gets another amazing idea." At least her ideas are artistic and tasteful and don't involve nudity?

After a pause where he gazes over the room, largely to make sure no one's coming his way he'd rather avoid, he inclines his head across the room, at a group of people — men, women, other — milling about, dressed expensively and a little outlandishly because they are in Baedal and, well. "That's Firoz," he says, a name he's mentioned absently before as one of his eccentric quote-unquote friends. Wolfgang is not proud of having managed to acquire a reputation as a gold-digger, because it's not true, exactly, or else he would have actually slept with any of them by now, but —

Anyway. "Next to him, that's Armen Basurto. Politician. He ran a couple times with True Unity, but retired two years ago. He said he wanted to move on, but apparently he got bumped out because of an incident with a horse and a cake. It's probably true, given that his wife is — oh, there she is."

Leading him around like a naughty child, yes.

The dress she'd changed into at the end of the show isn't quite her usual style, but she figured she might as well go all out and enjoy herself. She still likes it, quite a lot, but there's always a practical part of her mind that points out how difficult it would be to fight in all that lace. She's hoping there won't be any need for that tonight, though. It's also part of the reason she even bothered sticking around for the after party. Originally, her and Babs had planned to do this part together, and Steph had even managed to drag her dress shopping. With Babs gone, Steph had been reluctant, but eventually between not wanting the dress to go to waste and a sense that it'd be rude to leave straight away, she decided to stay.

When she gets down to the crypt, her first stop is to the bar, ordering a glass of champagne in her own personal little celebration for making it through the show without doing anything horribly embarrassing. Then she's content to mingle, searching the crowd for people who are familiar, or who might be interesting to talk to.

Edited 2012-07-01 03:49 (UTC)

Getting dressed up isn't really Clio's thing. She's always preferred rougher looks, softened with some floral print or bright colors, and she's never been able to quite master turning that into the sort of outfit appropriate for, say, an after party for a fashion show. Still, she makes an effort.

She'd enjoyed the show, not just because one of her friend's was up on the runway, and is looking forward to seeing what other people thought of the whole thing. When it's over, she considers going straight to find GG, but decides it might be nice to give her a bit of space after all that, and heads down to the crypt instead.

It took a little time to get comfortable, here. She did, more or less, throw herself into a deep end with regard to dressing up at all, but at least she feels like she blends in, absolutely not the fanciest person here; even standing next to Wolfgang with his eyecatching height and colours is a reassurance. The worst had been the journey between Badside and here, frankly, and will be again when they leave, even if she remains attached to Shrieky's side the whole way. Benji sips champagne, birdish, and listens and looks.

"A horse and a cake," she repeats, with her own emphasis. "Oh, that sure is his wife, isn't it. Rest assured that Mermaid and I have definitely improved your reputation while you were backstage." This is a little wry, self-deprecating; these people seem important!

GG's not nervous about the clothes, about walking. It reminds her, in a way, of staring someone down, of parading your strength, something which seems to fit with the theme of Penelope's show and the way GG lives her life. And she likes the clothes. She even feels curiously privileged to be here; the sense that she doesn't belong only makes that better. She enjoys feeling like a trespasser sometimes. It's like throwing up her middle fingers to those pervasive questions of identity which keep haunting her; maybe if you feel like you don't quite fit anywhere you eventually come to the conclusion that nowhere is really yours- but nowhere's really not.

It's the world which surrounds the clothes which bewilders and thus unnerves her, painted as it is in acrylic shades of perfume, hairspray droplets fanning through the air in acid clouds of scent, the smell of nervous sweat poorly covered by a variety of different deodorants, humans, xenians, strangers.

It's a show of strength, she reminds herself, and she bristles, tossing her shoulders back and lifting her chin, spreading out in her chair with every muscle tensed as her hair is combed up and pinned into a fauxhawk (something which she was originally fairly sure wasn't possible).

She snaps once, just once, when she finally gets her hands on a cup of coffee and raises it to her lips before it's literally snatched from her hand with cries of not your lipstick. Suddenly her teeth are bared and a growl's rippling from her throat, and then her hands are flying in Italian gestures as she demands in French, "Are you fucking serious?"

The outburst lasts for a split second, and then she's reining herself in, taking a deep breath and wordlessly holding up her hands; sorry, sorry, I'm fine, just stressed. She goes back to being stony-calm and hardened on the outside, goes back to focusing on her physical presence, on making herself bigger. On controlling herself. She cannot will not must not let herself slip.

The moon is waxing, she can feel it in her chest, under her fingernails. Penelope would probably call it a good thing; she looks less human in a way that's hard to define, looks somehow like this skin is too small for her. She makes the hair on the backs of human necks stand up like this. She takes a deep breath; right. Strength. It's not a bad thing that the moon is waxing. She can use this, this thing that makes normal peo- this thing that makes humans recoil from her and stare at her simultaneously. And she can use it not to assert dominance over other animals or move in xenian circles but to survive in this human world full of its bright and artificial smells, can stride into their sacred places and make them nervous and get paid for it.

It's a thought she keeps in mind, and she doesn't snap again.

Edited 2012-06-30 13:56 (UTC)

"Yes — No — I have to —" Finish getting ready, have his makeup redone because he ruined it by crying because he's horrible and is ruining everything and now he's making people have to redo their work which is taking more time and —

— he digs his fingernails into his arm (is that going to chip the nail polish, he thinks irrationally, will that make it worse) and wills himself to stop stop stop stop stop. He feels stupid, childish, dipping his head between his knees. It helps keep him from feeling like he's going to throw up.

I don't mind it being small — Wryly self-aware. If anything, at least it means whenever they're prompted to gather together in one space, be it by the gods or something else, it means it's not quite so overwhelming as this. It does feel... weird? He's not sure how else to word the vague discomfort he has lately with this separation between the cohort and the rest of the city.

It's something that he thinks about a lot when he's high.

That doesn't help.

This gets a laugh out of Sunny, a sort of suppressed one where maybe it's a little bit at Jae, because it's so young society to bitch about fashion walks, Sunny thinks, but it's not mean spirited or even cynical. They probably did suck for the reasons he states, in all fairness.

"That's because I'm here and because I'm good at fashion," he proclaims.

"There's plenty of time, we can just slip out for a second to get some fresh air," She gives a reassuring smile, knowing that with his head between his knees he can't see it, but he might be able to hear it in her voice. Steph also knows exactly where all the exits are, even the ones they aren't technically supposed to go through, and she knows the quickest route to all of them. They can be outside in less than thirty seconds, if they have to be.

Carefully, she touches her fingers to the back of one of his hands. Part of her wants to pull his hands away so he can't keep digging his nails in, but she knows that a) doing something like that would probably make things worse, and b) that pain can help, sometimes. So she doesn't, she just rests her hand lighlty on his, hoping a sympathetic touch - even a small one - might go a little way in helping him focus on something other than the panic. (She's always hated it when people touched her during a panic attack, but she remembers it helped Tim once. There's never a formula for this).

He finishes off his drink, looks mournfully at the empty glass for a bit, and thinks very seriously if he's up for braving the crowd for another. No. Maybe in another few minutes. "Oh, I'm not worried, then." Shrieky does tend to make An Impression on people, although he's definitely noticed that people who dislike him seem to be talked into confused misdirection instead. Anyway, at worst, 'weird ghost with great hair and weird friends' is accurate.

Pause. "Should I be?"

"Oh, I don't think so." This is sincere, because Wolfgang is no better than any of them save for also being from planet supermodel. Benji still looks faintly apologetic, like maybe she should have read up on Small Talk In Society for Post-Apocalyptic Immigrants or perhaps Wolfgang expected them both to sit in the corner and make no eye contact so as not to embarrass him when he invited them along. None of these things are true, but still; "We just accidentally got into conversations."

But more amused than apologetic. She is enjoying herself. All of this is different and interesting.

"Right, conversations. I forget that happens when you don't spend the whole time hiding under a table."

Not that he's thought about it.

(He thought about it.)

(His conclusion is that hiding in the bathroom is probably more practical.)

(And that if he could sit in a corner and say nothing and make no eye contact while other people socialised for him, that would be ideal.)

(Fuck.)

"Do you want another?" He indicates her drink.

Heh.

Benji sort of side-glances the nearest table like how it is understandably tempting, with their long table cloths, and the fact that she would prefer to enjoy herself because it is different and interesting through a pane glass barrier of objective observation, and the propensity for hide and seek to break out at any moment at home all sort of make it not a totally impossible daydream.

She finishes her champagne, the half-inch that was left.

"Yes," she says. "And you can tell me more about your weird friends. Um. The rich ones."

His instinct is to be like no, I'm fine, I don't need help, don't pay attention, but that's. Demonstrably false. People who are fine don't freak out at the prospect of being looked at. Still, it takes him a while — too long of a while, but what is in reality minutes feels like a couple agonizing hours to him right now — to talk himself down from that. He's not fine and feeling guilty over that isn't actually helping either way.

He still won't raise his head because he's pretty sure if he does, it's about to get all Exorcist in here. And then Penelope will actually murder him.

"Okay."

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St. Peter In Chains: The Collection. [OPEN!]

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