come_sailaway | 10th Contraption: Mawwiage

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10th Contraption: Mawwiage

Who: John Watson, Johnny Summer, and César Salazar with Rich Goranski, Fio, and Honoria Crabb AND YOU Oh god why are weddings like this
What: The throuple getting married by... the Captain?!
When: December 11th at 7pm
Where: John's
Warnings: I believe in us! But for now, nothing.

SEATING

John's has been transformed, the seating up front rearranged in rows towards the center dias with an aisle down the middle, the piano moved off to one side. The buffet for later can be seen off to the other. Decorations taken from Spirit Halloween appear here and there–flowers taken from cavalera flower crowns, sun and moon candlestick holders from the tarot collection, festively colored tablecloths draped down the walls like curtains or banners. A sign near the entrance says "seat yourself", although the front row on one side is reserved with a ribbon across the backs.

What can't be seen is who is officiating. Or the husbands, but at least that part makes sense. The dais is empty.

THE CEREMONY

As one of the few traditions in this wedding, music announces the start of the ceremony. Rich strolls in first, trying to look professional even if he’s clearly shaking a bit as he holds the small pillow with the rings laid on it. At least he’s dressed quite smartly, Johnny ensuring his red suit is wrinkle free and his cuff links are set in place. Fio, in a winged black dress and flowery headdress, follows after the ring bearer, adorning the path with paper petals as she moves along.

The first husband to be down the aisle is none other than Johnny, in a smart charcoal grey suit with a goldenrod pocketsquare, gold jewelry, and a wreath of orange blossoms on his head; and accompanied by Honoria Crabb in her perfectly tailored black tuxedo, worn with black gloves and a white bow tie. Watson and César take up the rear, arms linked together. César is wearing an equally fancy suitcoat with his tie held in place with a ruby and silver tie pin, and Watson is wearing an officer’s dress uniform, with the sword and without the helmet, and also his good cane. All three husbands-to-be are wearing green carnation boutonnières.

AFTER PARTY

It's time to eat, dance, and party!

The seating has been rearranged for sitting at tables around the "dance" floor. Food from Windjammer has been placed on some tables for a buffet. There’s a selection of fancy cheeses and crackers, sushi, premade sandwiches, and salad with dressings on the side. For dessert, to one side there’s a table with cupcakes, cookies, and chocolates arranged in a heart. On the bar are a couple bowls of punch (including one explicitly labeled as non-alcoholic) made by Johnny ahead of time, because he's been forbidden to bartend his own wedding, much to his deep chagrin.

There’s a space set just off the dancefloor for musicians who wish to perform, the usual John’s piano (bribed into behaving with a whole pan of beef brisket from the buffet) off to one side.

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“Mmmm...” Palamedes considers the state of his balance. He is on his two feet now, soles firmly planted on the ground. Sure, he’s swaying ever-so-slightly from side to side, and he could swear that the room was turning in a slow, unsteady circle, but he doesn’t feel like he is about to fall over again, and that’s a good thing, isn’t it? Perhaps the turning of the room is creating enough centrifugal force to stop gravity from pulling them downward towards the now-sticky floor...

Wait, what was the question?

Oh well, it probably wasn’t important.

“You’re pretty, Clarke.”

Oh god, he's so, so drunk. And sweet. And if there were an internal war between being annoyed or heartened, it'd be a shut out victory for the latter. The priority here is still getting him out of John's and into his bed to sleep it off, but the warm bloom of affection between her ribs causes a moments distraction.

Clarke tilts her head, pushes her lips into a classic aw! pout before a smile snags the corner of her mouth. "Thanks, Pal. I think you're pretty, too."

She releases his right hand once he seems centered enough to not tip over and fall on his face, but keeps them tethered together at the left; anchors her free hand on his left elbow and tugs, urging Pal to follow her guidance through tables, and lean on her as needed for support.

"And also pretty drunk. Please don't throw up on me. Let's just get you home."

Thankfully, some hind-brain sense tells Pal to keep a hold on Clarke’s hand, and he lets her guide him through the crowd like an obedient toddler or a puppy on a lead. “People say my eyes are pretty,” he says, glomming on to the topic of relative beauty. “They think I don’t know, but it’s obvious, really, and even if it wasn’t, people tell Cam. And she tells me. She says they’re my secret weapon, but I think my secret weapon is my razor-sharp wit and catlike reflexes.”

Unfortunately, he immediately ruins the delivery of his own joke by bursting into giggles.

This moment isn't entirely dissimilar to clutching his hand and hauling him up flight after flight of stairs in the middle of a violent sea storm. Except in that the ground is only undulating underfoot for one of them, and is thankfully so, so flat. Palamedes laughs, and that's always a lovely sound, but Clarke's little distracted by trying to wind him through tables, chairs, and other wedding patrons to keep the ego of those catlike reflexes intact.

"Hm," she hums back without really looking back at him. No need to look to remind herself how pretty those eyes are, still an unnamed shade of grey and fondly remembered for how they'd gleamed in the mixed shades of desert sunlight and Rover shadows back at the diner excursion. "Combine all three, you make a formidable enemy. Watch out for the table —"

They will, eventually, make it to the door of John's and the edge of the wedding festivities. Light and music spill into the Promenade, but it's relatively muted out of the party proper and languishes into distant ambiance the further they get towards the elevator.

Naturally, Palamedes immediately proves that his claim to catlike reflxes may have been a lie. Clarke is stuck doing all the hard work of maneuvering them out of the bar while Pal continues to giggle and follow along blindly. He comprehends her warning just a second too late; the table in question clips the side of his hip and he stumbles sideways into a stool that tips into another stool, which tips into another stool, which tips...

Well, you get the idea.

Thankfully, none of the furniture brings Palamedes down with it, and with renewed laughter he lets Clarke drag him the rest of the way out of the room.

“Well, that was exciting!”

There'd been a solid few seconds during the Captain and Skulduggery's dance when she'd wanted to storm out and somehow manage to leave the entire bar in shambles, but — a series of upended stools will have to do on that front. No apologies to remaining patrons, nor pause to wish the grooms well (though she at least hopes). Just as speedy an exit as one can accomplish with a near six foot tall drunk toddler at their heels.

Out in the hallway is better though. Something about a gathering of bodies and high tension makes the air inside the bar feel hot and thick, where as out on the main promenade everything is a little cooler. Pal laughs, and Clarke takes a deep breath. And pauses to disentangle their hands, instead falling back to his side and linking their elbows; better support and easier to guide.

"Exciting's sure a word for it. I can't believe the two of them, though. Did either Skulduggery or the Captain think that was going to go over well?

For some reason, Palamedes finds Clarke’s question extremely funny, which is weird, given that the situation isn’t funny at all. “D’you think that matters? They’re both rather insou— insouci— they don’t much care what other people think.” He leans into her, shoulders shaking even has his actual laughter stops.

“I can’t believe Skulduggy has such awful, awful, awful, awful…” he stumbles over his feet, but thankfully rights himself quickly, “…awful taste.”

"I can."

This is not based on the wearing of ugly Tommy Bahama prints, nor even his friendship with Darcy who Clarke currently considers to be insufferable. Those probably count for something, but it's honestly just vibes at this point. Vibes and dancing.

"I don't like the feel of any of this," she starts, before needing to shrugging against Pal's reverberating shoulder and deciding this was probably a conversation better had when he was sober.

"...is this your first time getting properly drunk?"

“Clarke. Clarke. Clarke. I was supposed to be him.” No, that doesn’t sound quite right. “Be like him. Attach, you know, my soul to my skeleton. Dr. Sex did it three hundred years ago, but I couldn’t exactly ask him, and maybe I’ll never know if I got it right, but Skuldugs,” look, Skulduggery is hard to say when drunk, “showed me it was possible. He’s so brilliant, why is he so stupid?”

Clarke is right—they really shouldn’t be talking about this right now, but you try convincing a drunk nerd not to talk about something.

Palamedes nods vigorously. "Mmm, yes." He rubs his face, nearly knocking his glasses off. “Can I lie down here?” The floor isn’t sticky here, after all.

"Doctor what?" Look, sorry, that just slipped out. No other response to all that Pal has just drunken word vomited is fully formed, and Clarke is neither sure how she feels about that shared goal — one accomplished, the other aspiring — or what exactly would actually comfort during this time of quiet crisis. What she ends up with after a beat is:

"...Smart and stupid are not mutually exclusive, just look at Jade and Rita." Shots fired but like, affectionately — and quietly at Pal as well, Mr. Tetrahydrocannabinol is active ingredient in hemp-derived intoxicants who can't pace his punch glasses. "You don't need to worry about attaching your soul to your bones right now, and if that ever comes up I'm sure you'll figure out a way to do it without completely voiding out all your senses. Or better tastes.

"And no, you may not. Chances are you won't get up again. Come on, Pal, we're almost to the elevator."

“Doctor Sex!” Palamedes means to explain, really he does, but then the name, and the memory of the incident in question, sends him into another convulsion of giggles. Thankfully, this is also enough of a distraction that he gives up the idea of taking a nap on the floor and lets Clarke lead him all the way to the elevator.

Once they’re inside, he leans against her, resting his cheek on her hair. “…So you’re saying I would make a better skeleton than Skuls Skuls?”

Speaking of people who are both very, very smart and very, very dumb.

Skuls Skuls...

Doctor Sex is a title that's going to live in her brain rent free for the next fifteen minutes until she remembers Latin loanwords and the fact Pal's last name is Sextus so it wouldn't be as weird a last name on the Sixth. But until that point, this rendition of Skulduggery manages to be more atrociously distracting.

This isn't fated to be a very long elevator ride, and while the initial idea to pawn him off on the hand rail springs up, Clarke decides it's better to keep him close. Brings up the arm not currently entwined with his and gives Pal a light, comforting pat on the chest.

"I think you'd make the best conscious skeleton that ever skeletoned." Unintentionally pulling a page from the Raven Reyes book: You're the most beautiful broom in a broom closet full of brooms. Trigedasleng was a difficult language, dummy-drunk is not.

And you must speak dummy-drunk awfully well, Clarke, because that is exactly the right answer. Palamedes absolutely beams. The best skeleton that ever skeletoned. Take that, Skulduggery. And Harrow, too, for that matter. And the King Undying, while they're at it.

Thankfully, Clarke doesn't need to support Palamedes' weight for long; in less than a minute the door slide open, and Pal lets himself be led out, clearly placated by her praise. Best skeleton.

She is fluent. Or at least, if Pal can make the effort to converse with her while she's high outta her mind, Clarke can equally put in the effort to meet him on this level, ridiculous as it may be.

Butter smooth draw to a half for the elevator, then a gentle ding to announce their arrival. Docile cargo in tow, it isn't a long walk to Cabin 105. And just outside the door, a redux of her adventure at the weed party, just with the roles swapped. Pal is gently guided to have his back to the wall next to his door, and this his pockets are being raided. Clarke narrates their next moves as she goes.

"You're going to go inside, get in the bathroom and drink as much water from the tap as you can manage. Then you're going to lie down in your bed, and I'm going to find you some ibuprofen or aspirin, and a snack."

Hm. That’s an awful lot of instructions, Palamedes thinks.

Except, because he’s drunk, thinking without talking isn’t his strong suit at the moment. “That’s an awful lot of instructions.” A beat. “I’m Master Warden, you know.” And the best skeleton, but obviously Clarke already knows that and he doesn’t need to repeat it.

Thankfully, the Master Warden is thirsty, and so he ambles in a not-quite-straight line towards the bathroom sink. Then he turns on the tap…and stares at it without even reaching for the water glass sitting nearby.

“Heeeey Clarke, do you know why intoxication leads to dehydration? Because I do.”

Master Warden gets an eyebrow raised, but no derisive snort. Okay, maybe a bit of a huff (more like Master Wobbling, could he even imagine a straight line right now?) as his Ship Talk phone is finally fished from his pockets and pressed to the lock, unlatching it so they can bumble inside.

Then she lets him wander off towards the bathroom, fingers crossed there's no spectacular falls, and initially busying herself with dumping out a wastebasket (no one needed bunched up pieces of paper, discarded pens, and general trash intermingled with vomit) and repositioning it by the bed.

"Because alcohol's a diuretic, same with coffee and tea," she answers while briefly dipping into the bathroom to grab a few towels. The running tap and empty water glass are noted but... it's a bit of a respect thing, decidedly not holding his hand through this process the same she'd done for Rita. Palamedes will either figure this one simple task out himself or he's too far gone, and she'll be back to drag him into the shower stall and turn the water on cold.

Palamedes meets Clarke’s gaze in the mirror and pouts. How rude. That was supposed to be his fun fact to share.

(If Camilla Hect were present, this is likely the point at which she would stand up and given Clarke a round of applause.)

It takes a few more moments, but eventually Pal remembers that the tap is running, and that it’s running because he’s supposed to be drinking water. Water, right. Because he’s thirsty, and because alcohol is a diuretic. He grabs the glass from the sink, fills it up, and drinks it down. Only a little bit of it splashes on his shirt.

Of all things that could happen, a little water on the shirt is the least worrisome outcome.

And at that, Clarke retreats out of the bathroom with an armful of towels. When Palamedes eventually follows, he'll find that she's turned down the blankets of his bed and laid out one body towel around where his head would lay, leading to the makeshift puke bucket wastebasket like a red carpet. Another is tucked neatly around his pillow, a third beneath the basket itself, and a face towel folded on his nightstand. Preemptive cleanup measures met, she's now got her back to the bathroom door and is unceremoniously rooting through his dresser.

Clarke is fairly certain most anytime she's seen Palamedes sleep he's either been wearing his day clothes or a skeleton onesie, and she's on the hunt for anything that'd pass as pajamas.

In the drawer Clarke will find a few pairs of bright pink sweats bearing the Serena Eterna logo and some innocuous Tommy Bahama t-shirts, which generally serve Palamedes for pajamas. By the time she finds what she’s looking for, she will discover Pal himself leaning heavily against the bathroom door jamb, a rather stupidly fond smile on his face as he watches her.

“Are you putting me to bed, Clarke?” he asks with a playful kind of singsong in his voice.

She may not have enough of a fashion sense to judge peoples outfits at the wedding party, but she does have enough of one to know these sweatpants are atrocious. Still, they're soft enough to serve the purpose and are withdrawn from the drawer along with the most plain TB tee-shirt she can find. Standing up straight to go and arrange them on his bed is when Pal clambers his way to the door of the bathroom and sings out at her.

And it's cute, in that carefree way all drunk people are; that smile is damnation and salvation all in one. But this time around Clarke's the responsible one and will play that role to the end.

"That is and always has been the plan, Palamedes. And you'll thank me for it."

At some point tomorrow he'll be sober and at least able to retain the dignity of not having spent the night on the floor of John's.

"Do I need to undress you?"

Palamedes may be drunk, but he still has his pride. Sort of. He shakes his head vehemently and makes his way (in a not-quite-straight-line, it must be said) to where she has laid out the clothes on the bed.

“Turn around.”

See? Pride.

Skepticism reigns, and for a moment Clarke is un-moving and un-turning, eyeing him like one would carefully watch a baby deer on a tightrope. But... it's no worse than leaving him in the bathroom unattended, and Palamedes had managed to not fall and crack his head open on the sink. He'd probably be fine right next to the bed. With a poorly concealed eye roll, she turns 180 on her heel and folds her arms.

"You've seen me dress," is muttered so far under her breath it's basically inaudible. She will busy herself stuffing discarded or rumpled bits of clothing back into the drawers and closing them while he fumbles to pull on those sweatpants behind her.

Palamedes, who definitely isn’t sober enough to pay attention to muttered complaints, dutifully sets about changing. It’s just as well, too, given that taking off clothes and putting them on again takes all of his concentration. Even with her back turned, Clarke probably hears a handful of oofs and thumps as Pal undresses (hopping around on one leg when he briefly forgets how to take trousers off) re-dresses (tangling himself in an impressive manner in his simple t-shirt) and finally sits heavily on the side of the bed. His hair is sticking out at all angles and his glasses are askew, but he is dressed. Somehow.

“All done!”

This is the type of frustration that comes from seeing — or not technically seeing — someone struggle with a task that you could have completed five minutes ago if you'd just done it yourself. And it's made all the worse by the fact Clarke's been frustrated this entire evening, ever since the Captain and Skulduggery had taken to the dance floor and not nearly as many people objected as should have. She's chewing on her bottom lip when Palamedes finally announces he's decent, and she turns to give a quick, assessing once over... Then nod.

"Good." job, boy.

Praise moment almost instantly over, Clarke's crossing back over to where he's seated and tugging the top blankets up, gesturing for him to get under them and lay down.

Unfortunately for Clarke, Palamedes remains complete oblivious to her irritation. Like the drunk half of many couples throughout history, he follows his girlfriend’s instructions like a poorly trained Labrador puppy: with enthusiasm, unselfconsciousness, and no particular skill. Pal sits down heavily on the bed, flops backwards, and beams up at Clarke.

“Good?”

Yes, he wants praise for getting into bed.

10th Contraption: Mawwiage

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