House of Cards RP

So apparently there are a zillion things going wrong with the Deck these days. Murders and Challenges and hijinks and all the sort of thing which really, well, if the denizens don't expect it by now, they're just not the best at denizen-ing this particular location of denizenship, are they.

So you know who isn't concerned? This Joker.

And you know who is still riding a high from his weekend get-away with his super-best-friend Johniel? Also this Joker. So you know who is ready to talk your ear off about elephants and dyeing silk and macaroni on a stick? Yes, still Cynric. He is, at least, playing very energetically while he babbles.

Seriously, though. Mac and cheese. On a stick. You know you have hours to listen to him talk about that. Don't be shy.

He'd been surprised when he'd come into Clive's office one day last week and Clive had told him to go off-Deck to see to the issue with the medical supplier, but he'd said it should only take a few days. Liam had, honestly, probably been glad to get Jordan out of his hair. Somehow, they'd gotten along much better when they were in separate suits; it probably had something to do with the fact that Liam hadn't had to deal with Jordan's actual management style.

They'd mostly just agreed on things like allowing drinks in public areas of the library.

The whole trip hadn't taken very long, really. He'd gone to Vienna and arranged to meet with the supplier for a very pleasant, reasonable discussion in a secluded location where he impressed upon him - with just words, this time - how very displeased the House of Spades was with his tendency to babble under the influence of cabernet. He'd left the man with a bottle of good French wine and his best wishes - and he'd also quietly arranged for a new secretary, a Spade, who would keep Jordan apprised of the situation in Vienna.

Mr. Lang wasn't aware of that, of course.

Still, Jordan was in a cheerful mood as he stepped into the castle in a summer suit. Almost whistling, really. It had been good to get out and do something just a little more productive.

It's weird, living with someone. Alasdair doesn't really think he's ever done it, at least not since he moved out of the family apartment - and with three sisters, he'd done that early, out of self-defense. It's not that Iggy's a bad roommate in the least; he's quiet, clean, neat, and doesn't expect Alasdair to provide dinner every night - or even most nights. If you had to have a roommate, you could do a lot worse.

Still, it's got him under some stress. Alasdair keeps secrets, after all, even if they're...sort of ridiculous secrets born more of pride than anything else. He can hide his writing career from Elani because she's not there every night, and she doesn't wander uninvited into rooms, but Iggy's living there - surely he's going to go into the library one of the days when Alasdair hasn't neatly locked away all the evidence of a career as a bestselling mystery novelist.

And then there's the missing 'rejection letter.' He'd brushed it off when he'd mentioned it to Iggy, but it's keeping him up at night. Because he knows it's not a rejection letter, it's Eve's notes on the latest Stacy Wheelock, and anyone paying any attention to the details is going to see that.

On top of all that, he's thirty-two today, something he's mostly kept on the down low. Thirty-two, he thinks as he drops onto a bench and stares across the Green at the tower. He was sure that by this time in his life he wouldn't still be teaching English. And he would have never imagined he was writing....potboilers.

What a life.

It's been going on for months. The quakes are over and don't seem to be starting up again any time soon, and there's no sign of any other disaster. Iggy just wants to move out of Heart Castle and go home. Unfortunately, as the rest of the family is adamant that the kids remain at the castle, he cannot. Or, well, he's not allowed to. Because poor little kids, even teenagers old enough to babysit their own siblings and cousins, need to be supervised. Even if some of them are already adults by the standards of the Deck.

Which is, of course, piffle. So he's put his foot down and packed his things and gone back to the Xiu house.

The Xiu house will not have him. So, alas, he is wandering the streets of the Town, box of belongings on one shoulder and dragging a monstrous suitcase behind him. Or maybe he's sitting down on a bench somewhere. Take pity on him, folk of the Deck.

[ooc: he will ultimately wind up at Alasdair's place, so offers of a home are welcome but will not be accepted for varying reasons.]

Sometimes even Jordan forgot the advice his mother had given him in the months before he'd turned on her - but some of it had been so deeply ingrained that he wasn't entirely capable of doing otherwise. It was, some would say, part of the reason he was trapped in this miserable purgatory between being ambitious and trying to be satisfied with his life. But Laureline's advice hadn't all been terrible; most of her advice, frankly, was sound and perfectly tailored for what Jordan had always been intended to be.

Which, of course, was King. Which, of course, was not really going to ever happen at this point, not when Clive was one of the few cousins on the Bernard side who didn't look at him like he was considering walking up and stabbing him.

One of the things he'd kept up, though, was the small network of spies that she'd recommended he build up. It was small - David would probably term it adorable, because David was an asshole like that - but Jordan didn't consider that to be a bad thing. The problem, really, was it was thin on Spades. He had just one, a Three he'd grown up with who'd been off-Deck.

And was now shut up with Jordan in his office.

"Really," Jordan said. "That's just fascinating."

Adam looked a little nervous, pushing a hand through his hair. "Should I tell the Queen?"

"No, I don't think so," Jordan said lightly. "I'll take care of it. And you said you were with Melanie? Who did she report to?"

"David. And then Julien, I think, but..."

But Julien wasn't Ace anymore, Jordan completely silently, and smiled as he stood up, clapping Adam on the shoulder. "We three should have lunch one of these days," he said, all pleasantries as they stepped out of his office. "I know a place."

He didn't go back into the archives after Adam went down the hall - there were cameras in there, even if there wasn't one in the private office he'd taken over. He wanted to think about this, he thought.

Some fresh air and a walk would do him good.

It's that time of year. Time to field last minute questions, figure out routes for trips, have IDs made and transcripts printed and finalize the decisions of the 18-year-olds in the Deck. It could be worse, Edie can't help but think. There weren't that many kids in each class in the Deck, after all. There could be so many more.

But this number of students committing to colleges is still a hassle, is still something that makes Evangeline Huntly very stressed. Which is why she'll be sitting on a bench in Town, grumbling to herself as she goes through files.

He couldn't avoid Shakespeare every year, as much as he tried. Some years, he managed to make the argument that - since Master Henry was directing one of the plays each summer - surely the seminar he gave to the students and mandatory attendance to one of the plays was probably enough, and Alasdair could focus his attention on less ubiquitous more frequently ignored pieces of the literary canon.

This year, the dean had been firm, though. Shakespeare in each of Alasdair's classes, from the fourteen year olds up through the eighteen years olds, and a comprehensive unit - which meant the sonnets, but also meant a play. He'd picked Titus for the eldest. Love's Labour Lost for the middle class, which left him with the youngest class; in a way, it was the hardest, because Eileen Eicheln was in it along with Leigh Pekkanen-Winston, and he wanted something that challenged her and didn't leave the rest behind.

And he wanted something unlikely to be performed by the theatre troupe this year, so that he didn't have to deal with Henry clapping him on the shoulder and jovially saying it'd been such a long time since Alasdair had brought him a play, and he hoped he hadn't given up on writing?

In reality, Alasdair thought as he browsed the shelves at the Inkwell, scrutinizing the titles of the Shakespeare plays, Henry probably did hope he'd stopped writing. It had always been clear enough that he considered Alasdair subpar and wasting both of their time. And there was probably a good deal of truth to that, not that Alasdair cared to admit that.

Hmm, he thought. The Tempest, or really hedge his bets and make them read Cymbeline?

He's read this book at least once a year for the past eight years but somehow it's never lost its appeal. Gil pulls it out of his satchel when the white noise in Mackinnon's Pub turns grey and snippets of conversations break his concentration. If Mooseknuckle was consistently dead at this time of night he'd hide out there, but the few diehard patrons who still show up have a tendency to get rowdy. Better to settle somewhere manageable like Mackinnon's than risk being drunkenly harassed about what kind of genitalia he thought the bar's name referred to once more.

Gil is nestled at his own table for two, though when he looks up from his book to rest his eyes a moment he notices the second chair has been snatched away. His shoulders are hunched and he's looking about as interested in conversing as a wax statue. It doesn't mean he isn't game for a visitor, but in no way does he want to appear as if he's fishing for company. He's even done his best to angle the cover of his book down so that it can't be made into a talking point. People who go searching for other people in bars are desperate, and desperation isn't an attractive quality on anyone. Gil turns his attention back to his book.

'I did not care what it was all about. All I wanted to know was how to live in it. Maybe if you found out how to live in it you learned from that what it was all about.'

He reaches for his glass, brings it to his lips and cringes when a chunk of ice claps him in the teeth. One down. Begrudgingly, he gets up from his seat, too impatient to get back to Hemingway properly drunk to wait for the waitress, and makes his way to the bartender. He leans his elbows on the bar and forces a small smile. No matter how impatient he is to return to his bubble (corner table, book, vodka tonic), Gil won't run the risk of being rude. He'll wait his turn, awkwardly perched beside a stool.

Friday nights were brisk in any bar, but at Ben's the crowd tends to thin out early with the younger people trailing off to more exciting places - be that the Four Suits more more drinking or the Wild Card for dancing - and by the time late evening rolled around, the place was limited to his regulars (it did kind of jazz him, honestly, that he had regulars other than Victor and the wife) and it was quiet enough that someone felt perfectly free to come and poke him if they wanted another beer.

So he took advantage of the time to go fiddle with the piano.

He started with traditional Scottish songs - both the bright and upbeat ones about death and execution and the melancholy ones also often about death before moving on to the rock music of his youth and that his mum had listened to when he was young; some Guns'n'Roses, some Queen, a little Pearl Jam and Nirvana.

Eventually, though, he started picking at a particular song. Sinatra wasn't his favorite, honestly, but you made allowances for your friends, even when they were thirty-five going on eighty.

It wasn't, he supposed, really a beach yet, but the rhythmic movement of the tides were already starting to erode the the grace and soil and leave something sandier in it's place. Just at the edge for now, but in time it would become a mix of sand and stones, with only patches of the grass that was currently blanketing the ground in between patches of snow.

He kicked a pebble into the...well, sea, he supposed, and eyed it before looking out at the island with the door.

"Just when you thought things couldn't get weirder..."

As hard and fast as the gossip about Zoe challenging Edison O’Brien for Six had flown, the crowd to watch them was sparse. Chives was there, as he promised, as was the math teacher who’d written the exam, but there weren’t many who really wanted to stand in the doorway of a small parlor and watch two Spades work complex mathematics out on whiteboards. People liked showmanship. They liked swords and performance, and this wasn’t that.

Zoe didn’t mind not being watched, and her handwriting was sharp and confident as she wrote out equations, solved them, and proved a few proofs on her way to earning the rank of Six back. It was probably a little...overconfident of her, Zoe reflected as she set the marker down and stepped back so that her work could be graded. She linked her hands behind her back and stood straight in her lavender pencil skirt and blue heels, watching Edison’s face.

There was something odd about his expression. He knew at least one of his answers was wrong, and he hadn’t even completed one of the other problems, but there was something smug in his face. A smirk, like he had the upper hand. Even though he’d lost, something that was confirmed just a few moments later.

Someone moved to congratulate her, but Zoe shook her head, and the room slowly emptied until it was just she and Edison, and then his smirk turned ugly. “You think you’re so brilliant,” he said, spitting the words out. “You didn’t think that I’d been expecting this for months, Miss Kattalakis?”

Zoe opened her mouth to reply, but he didn’t let her. He just continued on. “I counter-challenge you, Zoe Kattalakis, for my rank of Six of Spades,” he said. “In piano recital, during the chamber orchestra concert in exactly one week.” And there was that smug look again, Edison’s grin broadening as Zoe’s face lost it’s color and she turned approximately the shade of her white shirt. “Good luck with that one,” he added cheerfully, and swung out of the parlor.

It seemed, Zoe thought as she stood alone in the room, that everyone knew what she couldn’t do. She hadn’t been the center of attention on a stage since...since she was fifteen, she thought, pressing a hand against her stomach and staring at the wallpaper. And she remembered exactly how that occasion had gone. There’d been missteps, flubs as she played Beethoven with the Heart music troupe, and then there’d been Charlotte, afterwards. There had been a slap hard enough to leave a mark when Zoe had refused to do it again, even.

Her breath shook as she exhaled, and she swallowed around a lump in her throat before she straightened and turned towards the door herself. She should go celebrate, she thought as she stepped through and smiled briefly at the few Cards still in the hall. That’s what was expected, after all.

Ben could make her a martini; he was getting pretty good at those. The walk to Town would calm her down enough to put a good face on things, and maybe after some liquid courage, she could brave the real beast in this scenario. Not Edison; if they were alone in a room, Zoe could almost certainly outplay him. The stage, though...

The stage was something else entirely, and she only had a week.

[Run into Zoe either at Mackinnon's Pub, or at the theatre in Town.]

You know what's an incredibly pleasant way to wake up in the morning? Ulysses, James Joyce's nonsensical masterpiece, to the head. If he has to look on the bright side of life, he supposes he could say that at least Elani didn't pitch it at him on her way to Club Castle (she didn't actually spend the night, so that would have been hard). No, it was just another of the tremors, which just seems like a term the Faces came up with to spin earthquakes into something that wouldn't cause widespread panic.

Well, he had to get up to interview candidates for a new elementary-level activity instructor. Obviously a splitting headache is the best way to deal with a stream of perky early twenties fresh-faced Cards who just want to help the children. He's fairly sure that one of Elani's cousins was in there somewhere - he sort of recalls a knowing expression - and hell, they might as well hire them and get it over with. But administration wouldn't appreciate that one, so he just submitted his "recommendations" and went forth to deal with the relative sanity of teaching teenagers.

Beatrix called the school in his second class. They'd had to scramble and get a substitute - he'd begged Christopher Kahl to cover for him - while he went up to Heart Castle. His father was having another...episode. It was a bad one; this time he didn't remember any of them, and Beatrix didn't know what to do. Amelia didn't know what to do. Madeleine didn't know what to do, and worst of all, his mother didn't know what to do. Catherine DeWitt had always been the most capable woman he knew, Alasdair thought.

It was only when he was halfway through calming them down, when he'd agreed to take charge of coordinating with the doctors and started listening to the litany of things that they needed advice on that he realized what had happened. It didn't matter that he was a Six and that even his youngest sister ranked higher. It didn't mean that he didn't work for the Suit, and it didn't matter that he'd bought a house in Town and lived there. He was head of this family now.

And if that wasn't a good enough reason to get some air, he didn't know what was. He settled things as best they could be and kissed his mother on the cheek, saying he'd be back soon, and then walked briskly through the Castle halls, heading for the nearest door. It was hard to breathe.

[Catch Alasdair anywhere out-of-doors, in the Castle gardens or in Town.]

Ultimately, the timing was decided by Edison O'Brien's smirk after the news spread that their boss - Michael Brennan, Jack of Spades, Comptroller for the Suit - had moved out of the Castle. It took probably twenty minutes for Edison to tell the rest of the staff to screen his calls, he had an errand.

It took Zoe Kattalakis probably thirty minutes after that to knock on Edison's door, wake him up from his nap, and challenge him for Six. It at least got him back in the office working. Of course, the atmosphere was a little heavy after that kind of conversation, so when lunch rolled around, Zoe decided to eat out.

Or if not out, then at least not at her desk.

It was Sunday, she vaguely remembered as she walked through the halls. Days of rest weren't really happening just lately, with everything else, but she'd been meaning to talk to the Catholic priest about the wedding. And conversion, though she wasn't so sure about that yet.

(Catch Zoe in the Castle or anywhere in Town)

All things considered, one hasn't seen Alasdair writing much lately. He has been, of course - he's got deadlines - but he's been keeping it to late at night at his house, not so much in public. In light of things, though, school has been called off for the first few days of the week, and sitting in his house feels a bit oppressive just now.

So despite the cold, he goes out with his laptop, dressed for the weather in a coat, a scarf and fingerless gloves, and parked himself at a cafe table with a bottomless cup of coffee. He's tapping away, paying virtually no attention to the world outside.

Storms came and went in Chicago all the time, especially in the winter months. But this system was different. It loomed over the city like a bad mood, and wouldn't be banished, turning from rain to ice to snow and back again. Who knew, Dabney Rush thought as he watched the precipitation pummel the glass of his Gold Coast house, what this kind of weather would bring.

Absolutely, totally normal.

It's that time of year. That brief lull before every Deck child in high school starts to choose their classes, before nearly all the Deck high schoolers start hanging around her door trying to get advice about colleges. It's not that Edie doesn't like that time. She loves the students. Just. She might need some moral support to get through it.

And what's better moral support than a motivational tattoo? Or maybe she's just finding excuses for putting even more ink on her skin. Either way, she'll be bundled up inside a cafe in Town, looking over the lyrics of a few songs, many words here and there underlined. "Third tattoo," she'll announce to anyone who strays too near or seems too interested. "Seems like I should give it a good deal of thought."

((Tag please? ♥))