houseofcards_rp | It's Swing Time~

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It's Swing Time~

It didn't take a rocket scientist to figure out Elisha's motivation for organizing - or, honestly, delegating the organization of - a semi-formal dance party. Lucinda had suggested a ball, with stars in her eyes. She probably had already picked out ballgowns and themes in her head when Elisha had nixed the thing and - in a moment of desperation, with the memory of the swing-themed Fox wedding still in his head - suggest a Spring Swing, instead.

Everyone had run with it, and Elisha was pleased to say it had come out well. He was even more pleased to say that he didn't have to wear a suit, even if he stepped out into the lantern-lit gardens in everything but the tie. He paused near the raised dais provided for dancing and gave the small band the signal to start up the music before he attempted to fade back in the crowd. Not that that ever worked.

"Let the games begin," he murmured to no one in particular as he picked up a glass of champagne off a tray.

Note: Open to everyone and their brother; tag around, have fun!

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'Fun.' The word is 'fun.'

"Despite the genetic improbability, it's safe to say she's actually got this sort of thing in her blood. It's just amazing she had the time, really."

He does not know whereof fun, okay.

"I'm sure it does not help there are the three of you," but at least they had Tens to assist. And for a moment, Julien's gaze will stray to wherever Elisha is, "surprised, though, he doesn't just choose someone for Queen."

At this rate, Argine might as well have remained in the rank. Which reminds him.

"How is your mother, mm?"

She adores Julien. There isn't remotely a question that she doesn't feel safer, more certain of herself, when he's around. There's also this new nagging skip of her heart when they train together, true, but that's beside the point entirely.

That doesn't mean this conversation isn't a little... deflating.

"...she's well. She's-- much better now she's resting more." And she's somewhere in the crowd to be glanced around for. "It's made things... more interesting, I suppose."

He snorts lightly and rests a light hand on her shoulder, "you mean she's started to pry into your affairs?"

Must be difficult for a lady coming into puberty who's had to essentially be an adult for most of her life already to suddenly have an Involved Mother again.

Leaning into his touch is easy. It probably isn't making things any better with Argine, wherever the woman's lurking, but she can't help it.

"Which isn't fair at all, don't you think? She never has before."

And this was absolutely the worst age for it to be beginning.

"I suppose she's making up for lost time." But who was the one who'd caused its loss? Well, that could be laid at Argine's feet too. "But I don't expect she can really get back what's already passed."

And after a moment. "And I can understand it feels a bit insulting for her to try."

In some respects, he can understand that very well. He's got his own absentee parent to deal with, but Michael hasn't actually tried to manage his life for him. Which probably would've been met with knives, anyway.

"Thank you." This, after all, was what a teenager really craved--someone who listened, someone who validated, someone who made it acceptable to feel in what might almost have been an irrational fashion.

Something else for her mother to be upset about: it being easier for Eileen to share with Julien than her own flesh and blood.

"Perhaps it will be easier, later." When she's considered a woman of age, in the Deck, and can look her mother in the eye.

Probably not, parents tended to have this idea that once a child always a child, but it was a goal worth looking toward, anyway.

Especially since Eileen had developed so many connections in the Deck on her own. It left her rather...well-positioned, really. But that isn't the sort of thing he ought to comment on here or now.

"Two more years can't be so bad."

Because in two years, she would be a woman. She would take control of her own life, undo the rank she had been handed and earn it properly; emancipate herself if she had to.

"Or maybe it-- will settle. Suppose we'll have to see."

"Likely it will pass before you even realize." That's how it tended to happen. Particularly at this stage of life.

"Especially if you have other things to focus on." Like, you know, visiting Spade Castle, maybe. Or riding out on Evander.

Visiting Spade Castle--with or without Evander--wasn't going to be something her mother ever stopped her from accomplishing. There were, clearly, lots of reasons for this. Not just the man standing beside her.

Clearly.

"But she finds such fault with the other things I do focus on."

"Is that your fault then?"

Is she focusing on the wrong things? Or is it that she's focusing on things Argine thinks are the wrong things because they aren't the things she thinks her daughter should be doing?

"That I don't live a life tailored to pleasing her?"

Clearly the second one. Entirely the second one.

"I'm sure, in many ways, it is my fault. I don't feel overly badly about it."

"I would think," he says thoughtfully as he leans down a bit so these words are for her ears only, "that fault I'm referring to lies in other people's perception."

Eileen, after all, has done nothing wrong, arguably. Except the whole coming to visit him when he was imprisoned thing. But really there wasn't anything else any reasonable parent should find objectionable.

Of course that has her standing a little straighter. Of course she's got the ghost of a smile on her lips for having one of the few people whose perception does matter on her side.

"What, then? Better to just live one's own life?"

"Mmm," he says, more or less agreeably. "Certainly perception can matter. But I'd rather feel I didn't spend my life catering to it."

"D'you cater to yourself? Or not even that?" A little light, maybe, a little flippant. But wasn't that better for a party?

"Who ought I cater to then, hmm? Any suggestions?"

Yes, they can lighten things up now. It is a party

"Game theory requires me to nominate myself, you know, Julien. It can't be helped."

And it shouldn't be pushed what branch of game theory this was. That wasn't a light and party-like direction; at least, not for people who weren't Eileen.

Julien actually laughs at that.

"I believe you're right. I shall take it under consideration, my dear."

That, right there, is a victory. A laugh at the culmination of proper time alone in a crowd? She's absolutely beaming.

"I do appreciate it." And down dips the curtsy, because what the hell else is she going to do in this ridiculous dress. "Thank you, Julien."

More for agreeing with her, listening to her and validating her, than anything else.

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It's Swing Time~

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