Birthday Party

[peripheries]

Who: Paul Atreides and all his CR
What: Throwing everyone’s favorite Duke a surprise birthday party
When: Forwarded dated to April 1st
Where: Bone House in Gaze

Content Warnings: Drinking, underage drinking, drugs (both fictional and not), drawings of space worms, skeletons, will add further warnings if necessary



When you arrive at the house in Gaze, (affectionately known as Bone House), a skeleton will open the door and offer to take your coat if you have one. No need to take your shoes off or anything!

The large house has been decorated with black streamers and confetti. In the entryway and hung on the railing to the second floor that overlooks the entrance to the great room are large banners that say “HAPPY BIRTHDAY PAUL” (though one looks like it used to say “Jaune” but was just painted over? Whatever).

In the Living Room, there is a large board and various colored markers for people to write messages to the birthday boy. There is also a table full of bottled water and various couches, chairs, and beanbags to collapse into if the party gets to be too much and one needs a quiet place to rest or a place to chill if you’ve imbibed too much… well, whatever you had.

It is also where all the food and drinks are.

There’s an extremely large charcuterie board with the usual meats, cheeses, and olives as well as an extremely eccentric collection of snacks ranging from individual sized Cheez-it bags, to humungous bags of Doritos and salty chips, as well as nearly every kind of Oreo one can imagine.

There are also various cakes, all angel food. Some are misshapen, some have an attempt at being frosted with whipped cream and fruit, one even says “Happy Birthday Ka-” before that was hastily covered with a bunch of strawberries jammed really close together.

At the island, a skeleton is playing bartender. Surprisingly, it can seem to take and understand individual orders, but there’s always a constant flow of tequila shots being made and sent out to the great hall to be served by another skeleton.

And, no, of course it’s not going to check your age to see if you’re legal. It’s a skeleton. Why would it care?

The Great Hall is the center of activity and where everyone is encouraged to mingle and have fun. There is a skeleton on the grand piano in the corner gleefully playing piano covers of the hits from the Shrek Soundtrack with the occasional cover of “DaRude’s Sandstorm” when it has another one to help out.

In another corner, on huge piece of paper that spans nearly 6ft wide and 8ft tall is drawing of an Arrakis sandworm and it’s giant maw. The game is Pin the Tooth on the Sandworm and it’s… very easy… because the worm maw is most of the board. Even if the skeleton spins you as you’re blindfolded, it’s pretty hard to lose. If you manage to do it, which is likely, the skeleton running the game will award you a tequila shot! If you lose, the skeletons will award you a tequila shot (but it’s rail).

(It’s a drinking game, isn’t the point to drink?)

There’s also a table that has many candelabras on it, numbering up to seventeen. They’re still lit and burning even though there is a sign that says “make a wish!” even though it almost looks like a shrine for the dead.

…It’s maybe clear that the concept of “birthday candles” was greatly misunderstood.

There is also a skeleton dealing out small doses of “Spice”, a psychoactive drug straight outta the Duneverse. However, you must check in with this Skeleton to get a dose. There will be no “permanently melting your brain with ancestral memories” at this party!

Teacher’s/God’s/Jod’s/The Emperor Undying’s study, adjacent to the main hall, is closed and locked. Though, the lock is fairly easy to break if someone really wanted to get in. There’s not even skeletons guarding.

That said, many things are warded with eerie runes of blood and bone.

So, fuck around and find out.

The upstairs is generally off limits. Party goers can climb up the stairs, and it’s encouraged if they want to look over the Great Room from above, but all of the bedrooms are carefully guarded by more skeletons who will SCREAM VERY LOUDLY if you try to enter and will become hostile if done by force.

Of course, this won’t happen if you are with someone who lives in the house.

Enjoy the party! Mingle away!

((ooc: if you have any questions or anything, please hit me up at worldtype)) or via PM.))

Birthday Board | At the Party | The Morning After | IC Party Games | Spice Dealer

Comments

[terriblepurpose]

The lens through which a thing is examined defines the boundaries of the understanding of the thing. It determines the narrative structure that must be built to establish the scaffolding of any understanding, the story about the thing that allows it to be articulated to the self. The trick of understanding is not perfect knowledge, a stochastic impossibility, but constructing a lens with sufficient practical scope.

Moon-eyed and bewildered, Midoriya so close that the heat of his skin is nearly tangible on Paul's, Paul discovers that he's left something out of the lens.

It had made sense that Midoriya would want to kiss Kaworu. Paul understands the pull he exerts, his heart such a brave and open thing when he trusts you enough to put it in your hands. And he's starting to understand the other kind of appeal in the slim, fey lines of him pressed against his side, barely there friction he wants more of even as he works through this unexpected shift.

But it's not a shift for anyone else. He's the only one who didn't see it, and he doesn't know what that means. He knows he's attractive by almost anyone's standards, and here they are, enmeshed in each other after a morning of flirtation, and he still doesn't understand why Midoriya would want to kiss him. He didn't understand why Kaworu wanted to, still wants to. It's one thing to be welcome as an observer. It's another to be invited in.

(Sometimes he thinks he's missing something from his own lens, that something else hides in the grey shadowed blindspots of his understanding of what he is, something small and human and mundane.)

He makes a fumbling search for Kaworu's hand, lacing their fingers together like he's bracing to jump from the roof with him again. He looks at him through dark and green and pale until he trusts what he sees, and he flits back to Midoriya, a mirror of his uncertainty.

Then he closes his eyes and the distance between them, the kiss soft and careful, as much question as answer: this? he asks, with cracked lips and the faltering of his breathing, with the squeeze of his hand, with me?

[wannasmash]

Paul looks as bewildered as Midoriya did last night when he realized he never thought of himself as through the eyes of the other two. For a moment, he's afraid he's misstepped and made Paul uncomfortable. He's relieved he waited for him. It felt right to, as Paul had not made himself clear like Kaworu.

Midoriya can only respond one way when he looks at him like that. As Paul shyly moves to him, he slips his scarred hand more securely behind his head, deep in the messy riot of his curls. His arm forms a protective curve. Midoriya gives himself over to the dark red world of his eyelids, the press of Paul's arm, the skip of his breath, and the echo of Kaworu's.

He clutches Kaworu tight enough to know the shape of his ribs, as if they are all in flight rather than safely ensconced in a bed. Paul didn't give him guidance like Kaworu did. Midoriya feels like he missed a step on the stairs. His hand in Paul's hair is sure, but he fumbles his lips before finding his way. He smooths Paul's cracked mouth with the soft dampness of his own, what little knowledge he has, and the deep tenderness he feels for him.

His smell-taste is different from Kaworu's. Midoriya wants to take Paul's darkling windswept one and Kaworu's pale sky-sea one and gently press these petals between the leaves of a book in his mind. He doesn't care all three of them are well-fermented from imbibing last night. The time they shared together--amusing, singular, awkward, soft, and asleep--mingled and made them heady.

Over the months, Paul taught him a closer language of touch. He recalls the arms they have woven around each other in urgent comfort. He feels, again, his heart pressed close against his. (Surely everyone can hear the thundering of his own.) Paul's shape should be familiar even just from the strikes and tackles they have practiced. It has been made new here.

Midoriya contends for something of that familiarity and tries to bolster Paul with the challenge he presses against his mouth. Unexpectedly, teeth graze against his own--

"Is this okay?" he whispers lowly with a hot breath, opening watchful eyes bare with apprehension. His full pupils draw in at the light, but only a little.

[peripheries]

"Yes, it's okay," Is Kaworu's interjection, drawn up by Paul holding his hand and Midoriya pulling him close. He butts his head against their chins, pressing them apart so he can insert himself between them further. He's still not used to this. He still afraid that if he doesn't fight for every scrap of attention, it will vanish.

He presses his lips to Paul's neck, just at the underside of his jaw, playfully kissing the soft skin there before nipping playfully. He thinks he knows what Paul likes. And he hopes that Midoriya will start to show him what he likes by experimenting with him.

[terriblepurpose]

Midoriya's hand in his hair is a broad, steadying pressure that Paul relaxes under as the other boy ventures further in the kiss. His mouth parts softly, which is when their teeth meet, catching a thin sliver of his lip between them. The tiny inward suck of breath at it would go unnoticed if they weren't so close, as would the faintly dazed gloss of his eyes as he looks back.

He'd say something, if not for Kaworu answering (correctly) for him - if not for the nip Kaworu gives just beneath his jaw, which draws an open gasp out of him, his back arching like a plucked thread. He wasn't expecting that; he's unguarded, shiveringly vulnerable, eyes half-lidded as he nods with his throat bobbing in a muted swallow.

"Yes," he enunciates, clean and precise, and turns his head to catch Kaworu's mouth in a hungrier kiss, hooking his leg more securely around Midoriya's to wind him even closer.

He can only be so good. He can only be so restrained. He can only be wanted so long before he starts to believe it, warm and sweet as stolen honey.

[wannasmash]

Midoriya's teeth clack when Kaworu bumps him, but he only blinks mildly in surprise. He lets out a quick sigh of relief that breaks into a fond smile. Does Kaworu think he will be neglected? But Midoriya knows old phantoms don't have to make sense. Then Midoriya has to wonder just how much attention Kaworu wants, how much he can take, and what happens if that cup overflows. It feels like the kind of challenge he can't back down from, but one that may take more exploration than just one morning's fumblings.

He drags his hand out of Paul's hair and slips it under the curve of his back to catch the one rising against him. He's not sure what to do until Paul tangles his leg closer (and onto one of Kaworu's). It elicits a familiar response: Well-schooled in holding someone in another context, he clutches him bodily, traps Paul's leg with his thighs, and bears down with his weight. If Paul moves anything but his arms now, he will be met with a warm, firm pressure. It's--more electric than Midoriya anticipated, and the weave in his body tenses.

Kaworu's hip is jabbing more than it should, and a pained noise stumbles out from the back of his throat. He pulls up the hem of his shirt to discover (remember) a fist-sized bruise on his stomach from the previous night. He cracks an amused, hard-edged smile. He finds his focus again with a calm that uses his thundering heart instead of fighting it.

He buries his face into Kaworu's thin jaw. He kisses along it to the pink shell of his ear, into which he confesses,

"You both feel so nice." His breath is clumsy, but his hand knows where the nape of Kaworu's neck is, where to follow it into his spine, one shoulder blade, the side of his hip. He slides his hand up under his shirt and memorizes these shapes again more clearly.

[peripheries]

Kaworu will take as much as he can hold and more. He'll grasp, even if it breaks all of his fingers in the attempt. It's much better than being alone, he thinks.

As for now, he grins at the sound he's able to draw out of Paul. It's so desperate. He can feel the weight of Paul's longing, yearning, and he wants to grasp it, wrestle it, make it his. But instead, he's trapped between two bodies and it settles him in a strange way. The yearning is still there but contentment is starting to flow in like the tide.

When Midoriya makes a noise, Kaworu tries to shift a little, aware of the sharpness of his hip bones, though unaware of the injury. It's an unconscious bit of consideration, of kindness, that he would have unlikely been capable of even a few months ago.

He arches softly with a sigh as soft as the window as Midoriya presses soft lips against the tender skin there. Midoriya hands and lips are more delicate than Kaworu would have expected, not that he expected Midoriya to be rough, but his hands had always been firm. He didn't know he was capable of such a light touch.

"It's warm," he mumbles. Of course it is, being at the center of two bodies, but that's not what he means. It's just... warm, inside and outside. An unfamiliar, but welcome, feeling of safety.

[terriblepurpose]

There are times Paul finds himself at odds with his body like he never was before the world fell apart in his hands, and then there are times, like this one, where he remembers what it is to be wholly attuned to himself. He kisses slickly to the corner of Kaworu's mouth as the angel speaks, arching under the enclosure of Midoriya's firm thigh, his free hand not sunk in Kaworu's hair searching out the tender place that Midoriya reveals by hiking up his shirt.

"Couldn't let you be cold," Paul tells him, layered with heat and meaning that also extends well past physical temperature. But it is warm, a spreading ache of relief under the salve of these other, much-cared for selves. He traces the bruise with lightly skimming fingers that happen to brush Kaworu's bared hip, idly flitting between them with new assurance.

It's like a dive, and like a dance. It's like picking up a perfectly balanced knife and setting the hilt in his palm. It's like all and none of those things, a sense of knowing, at last, what it is he should do, no matter what stumbles might mark his progress.

"I want you to feel nice," he says to both of them, the low ripple of promise back in his voice, and he sets about learning how to do just that.