[OTA] Meanwhile, On a Greek Island

[headfollowheart.livejournal.com]

I get the feeling the general theory is that alcohol improves bowling scores.

[Yes, Saturday night in Santorini is being spent at a rooftop bowling alley. There are warm breezes, stars, flowing alcohol, and five twentysomethings armed with bowling balls. There's no way this could go badly. Threadjacking is encouraged, as is taking the above sentence as a text message. She's glued to her phone anyway.]

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[black0and0white.livejournal.com]

"It'll be lovely." Planning is starting. "We'll have to hit Lyon and Marseilles, and of course, Paris, and Lyon, Toulouse, and Marseilles, and Montpellier, and... did I say Lyon?"

[onlytolerable.livejournal.com]

Suffocating. [She tugs ineffectually on his hand, all training deserting her in her alcohol-fogged brain. At least he probably won't remember this tomorrow. Dear lord. Don't let him remember. Why is he still there? Hugging? Wait--]</small. Dancing. I'm going dancing. Let me go.

[black0and0white.livejournal.com]

Dancing? ((Gasp. And now excitement.)) Can I too? Pleeeeease. Pretty please. Pinky promise please?

[onlytolerable.livejournal.com]

Noooooooo. We can't let him win! Where's your--your--sense of notlettingwinness? Zoe's last statement clicks, and Sophie darts a look over her shoulder.

You. It's the red hair. Always the hair. Something's bothering you. [Zoe normally puts her phone away when she's with friends.]

[headfollowheart.livejournal.com]

"Just twice, don't worry." Zoe smiles, though, and leans an elbow on a table. "I've only ever been to Paris, and just overnight."

[headfollowheart.livejournal.com]

Competitiveness. And it's not just me, or they'd have turned and looked at those three blondes that all somehow remind me of your sister Lotty. [Which was probably a little sharper than necessary.] Some men like red hair.

It's...nothing much. [Just impending doom she was going to have to own up to.] An impulse decision I made a while ago is just paying off.

[onlytolerable.livejournal.com]

[Sophie peers over at the three blondes and starts to giggle.] Goodness! Right down to the hair and the lowcut--[She holds her hands up in front of her chest.]

[She spent years paying attention to Gerhardt's tone so she'd know which way to jump. Something's not adding up right here, but she's too befuddled to think it through. All she knows is she's going to make sure Zoe talks to her by tomorrow.]

You don't look like it's nothing much. [She shakes her head. It's supposed to be a vacation. People aren't supposed to worry on those, right? So she reaches down and gives Zoe's wrist a tug.] Come on. Let's do something fun.

[heart-the-art.livejournal.com]

"My mother was thirty when she had me and my father thirty-two. They waited." They didn't meet until her mother escaped the Deck. And she is always someone's teddy bear. She wants a teddy bear. "Shouldn't I be getting you something for your birthday?" He has a bigger heart than he'll ever admit.

[onlytolerable.livejournal.com]

I--[Anything if he lets go of her.] There was a room when we came in--other side of the bar--remember? [The place where the bone-shuddering bass reverb is coming from?] If you want....

[And he'd be distracted by a new shiny in no time and she could escape. A broad smile lifts Sophie's lips. Perfect.]

[headfollowheart.livejournal.com]

It's uncanny, isn't it? I feel like I'm seeing triplicate. [She shrugs her shoulders and then blinks as Sophie grabs her wrist.]

...Sure. Like what?

[Bowling clearly wasn't keeping her from worrying, obviously.]

[heart-the-art.livejournal.com]

Her family wanted to give her a crash course beyond the BJJ she learned. The Molyneux were known for their skill in canne de combat and her uncle wanted to teach her sword play. It was all turned down. Now. Now she's considering doing this again. But after she does her challenge. ... which she needs to tell people. Maybe a text.

"Ping-pong. Well, better than beer ping-pong." She gently plays with a straw. "It does, doesn't it?" The petite brunette shakes her head before taking her purse and trying to fish out the medication that was dolled out for her. "Charming means little... charming just means you go and do something stupid... but it's good to give a shot if she feels that deeply for so long. It's been a while." She's pretty sure someone did.

"And you. You do not look like you're happy and warm and enjoying the Greek drink and ... moonshine."

[headfollowheart.livejournal.com]

It would be good to mention that. Zoe's fairly sure Aunt Sunnae will breathe a sigh of relief and stop doing reprises of What Do You Do With A Problem Like Lasandra. But if Sandy does want to learn more defense...Zoe would highly recommend Maggie, who's just gotten back.

"I think that would be too unfair even by Jordan's standards, considering Blythe's kind of a pixie." Zoe half-smiles. "No, you're right, charming doesn't count for anything unless there's something more behind it. But Monty's one of those crushes, you know? And I think Blythe might have been kept too busy to have them when she was sixteen." So had Zoe, except...Charlotte was absentee enough that you could always find time. And thus the twenty five year old Club rock musician enters the picture. She doesn't even know where he went off to.

"It's ouzo, the national drink of the nation of Greece," Zoe says, and shrugs. "I'm just...worried about something."

[heart-the-art.livejournal.com]

Just when Sunnae was getting the high notes. She might announce it on text later on text tomorrow to a few friends. She has two months to truly get into shape, though. And then she'll swim. Of course she'll do the self de- Wait... she can't do her swim training for another few days until Frankie gives the okay about swimming again. Still it was going to happen.

"She's a talented pixie, but I wouldn't want to think about the mess that would happen if she fought Jordan. Because if Hadyn fights like a devil, then I bet Jordan does too." Though she had nothing but kind words for Hadyn in the past few hours. He checked her nose and defended her. The kid was now okay in her book.

"I didn't have much time for crushes like that. I had a boyfriend for a little while but... it wasn't going to last. Not too many things do..." And now it brings her to the memory of Thursday and the little uncomfortable shift in her stomach. With her damned luck with sleeping with men before a vacation, she might be joining Blythe on the 'men trouble' brigade in the future. After Pasha hasn't spoken to her since Aruba... and Nicholas probably won't give her another look. He had seemed...

"Well, I can't have it so I'll pretend it's a delicious union of olives and grapes. What's the something eating you?"

[headfollowheart.livejournal.com]

Zoe has every confidence that Sandy can make it to Seven. And she thinks it'll be good for her. The extra responsibility, along with the help from Milo.

"He's highly formidable." Alcohol-induced vocabulary words again. "Papa taught me self-defense in part in case Jordan escalated the bullying beyond just being an asshole." Instep-crotch-nose: the one-two-three punch champions teach their preteen daughters, apparently. And it's obvious that the whole lot of them - Hearts and ex-Hearts alike - needed a girl's night with chocolate and ice cream and bitching about men.

Or life. Zoe sighs as she rubs her forehead. "I did...you know, I don't want to, not tonight." She smiles a little. It's faint, but it's there. "Let's go make sure Cadogan doesn't absolutely destroy us in bowling."

[black0and0white.livejournal.com]

'nd I'll dance with you, Miss Sophie something something something Berthier. You, you, you. No one else. ((Good luck, Sophie. He's humming happily into your hair again, arms tight around you.))

[black0and0white.livejournal.com]

"Mine didn't. Fitzgerald tradition!" This is obviously cause for laughter, because... Fitzgeralds. That's enough of a reason, right?

"You have t'get something. The clooooothes will be your goody bag."

[black0and0white.livejournal.com]

"What." He stares at her, then shakes his head. Never mind what the world is doing behind her face. "You are not a Mediterranean girl. No more. Not allowed. Your licenseses have been reeevoked."

[headfollowheart.livejournal.com]

Zoe makes a face at Adrien. "I'm a Deck girl," she says with an amused look. "All off-Deck trips before this one have been strictly supervised by parental figures." Well, one parental figure. And strictly speaking, Paris had not been, but it hadn't been quite this...

Crazy either. More shoe-shopping had been involved.

[black0and0white.livejournal.com]

"Soooo? That is a horrible excuse for never going to Southern France! The French Mediterranean is the best." He will ignore any stares from diehard Greece patriots.

[headfollowheart.livejournal.com]

They're technically in the Aegean, anyway. "Well, we're just going to have to correct that then, aren't we? I thought about going to Nice, actually, but Santorini won." Because she never got to speak her language anymore.

[onlytolerable.livejournal.com]

[Oh, lord. She's created a monster. Honestly. How does she get herself into these situations? Sophie opens her mouth to protest, but starts laughing instead.]

Don't make me play the name game, EPA Fitzgerald. [She rests her hands over his.] You need to let go if we're going to dance.

[black0and0white.livejournal.com]

"And Marseilles is still the bestest. We'll go. You bring along Victor." It isn't just Paris that's the city of romance. Adrien would argue that France itself is the perfect country for lovers.

[black0and0white.livejournal.com]

Not for me, lady, oh no. I'm just Adrien. Like how Cher's just Cher. ((Thank goodness he doesn't strike a pose. He just clings tighter instead.)) I bet you we could dance together like this.

[onlytolerable.livejournal.com]

That would make a whole...six...brain cells. [Sophie's not sure where she's going. She only knows she needs to get Zoe into the spirit of things.] Not sure. Something in a million years we'd never do. Um...is it too late for the beach? I've never been to a beach before. It's amazing! We can, um, build sand castles or be pirates or, um, look for turtles. You decide.

[headfollowheart.livejournal.com]

"That might be nice," Zoe says. Sort of wistfully. She and Victor have never gone anywhere together, and a part of her - despite everything else - remembers he took Elani to Rome once. It feels pretty petty. "Maybe I can finagle it as a birthday gift."