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Post by Mercutio on Jan 10, 2009 14:23:06 GMT -5
Upon reaching the Opera house, Rosalind at his side, Mercutio strode up the stairs as though he knew exactly where to go. The front entryway only gave him a moment's pause; with the wary air of someone being impressed against his will, he whirled mid-step, head tilted up, to take it all in. He'd been here once before, but that time he'd snuck around the back and so had never actually seen the lobby. And since that last time he'd also gotten lost backstage after sneaking in, he'd thought to come in the front way instead. And it was...big. Very big. Gold and gilt everywhere. Mercutio hunched his shoulders against the grandeur and glanced behind him for Rosalind, although his eyes were only on her for a moment before they danced off again- Mercutio had spotted the nude statues. He looked behind him for Rosalind again, his eyebrows raising, but the smirk growing on his face was suggestive of nothing but lechery.
(( Tag Kris and Sarrin. ;D Also, I intend for Alex to find them in the auditorium, which is why I put this thread there- it's just, you really can't expect Mercutio to go past those statues without comment. ))
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Post by Alex on Jan 10, 2009 15:00:02 GMT -5
((See, I'd love to have Alex come up and tease him--but I'll let Rosalind have that honor.
...is anyone else ever tempted to write their British characters' posts with Brit spellings?))
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Post by Rosalind on Jan 10, 2009 16:06:17 GMT -5
((Hahaha. I am.))
Rosalind had remarked upon those statues herself upon entering in with Alex. She had been dressed as Ganymede then, and, even with her suspicions of Alex, which were proven right so quickly, she had been sticking to that guise then. How peculiar, really, that she'd thrown it off so quickly! She couldn't imagine having any incentive to do such a thing with Mercutio. He was a charming, funny fellow, of course, and really endearing, but he'd aired his views on women and Rosalind felt sure that once she fell into that category, he might see her in a different light.
Watching his amused, prurient expression, she couldn't help but find it formed on her face as well. She slipped her hands into her pockets unassumingly, but said in a moderately cheeky way, "Go on, try your luck - it will work better than your..." As though she had meant to say something else, she paused a moment before continuing, smile widening. "Charm. They're awfully frigid. But you'll have more luck with them than the girl I've got stashed up in this Opera House."
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Post by Mercutio on Jan 10, 2009 17:40:33 GMT -5
Mercutio wrinkled his nose at her. “You’ve no faith in me, then? Pity.” He turned on his heal and stalked forward with a stare that would have made any maiden blush and any maiden’s relative clench his fists. The statue, however, remained impassive. Mercutio skipped up the first step or two, exaggerating the nonchalant arm-slipped-around-the-shoulders, the idle glance away and then back, the excuse of whispering sweet nothings into the statue’s ear in order to put his lips to her ear- and paused to send an absolutely dazzling and very direct grin at a passing man who stopped as if he would say something, then frowned at Mercutio’s stare and moved on.
Mercutio’s murmur rose in volume again after the man had left, resuming right where he’d left off with one hand curled around the statue’s stomach and his head tilted conspiratorially to her golden face. “The most beautifully shaped buttocks I have ever seen,” he was telling her, with a convincing display of sincerity. “Marvelous, simply enchanting- say, my darling, how do you like the view up here of all the posh wigs? No, don’t squirm, listen to me. Your gold leaf is worth more than any of them. How do I know it’s only leaf? Not your fault, sweetums, it’s just some enterprising bugger’s taken a knife to your side here and I can see where it ends- no, listen, I- no- fine. I don’t want some hussy who bares herself in a public place anyway.” He sniffed, exaggeratedly removing his hands from around the statue’s waist. “You’re right, Ganymede, pristine as parish priest’s drawers. Not so much as a smile. Come on, let’s go.”
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Post by Rosalind on Jan 10, 2009 18:19:01 GMT -5
Rosalind stretched her arms above her head lazily as she followed him out, rolling her head to the side as though easing out a tension in her neck, and folded her hands casually behind her head for the time being, brushing against her cap and knocking it sideways atop her hair. From a distance, they might have looked like kin. Rosalind's crooked know-it-all smile certainly well fit a cousin taunting his relative over the abuse he had received from a prudish woman. She caught up to him with a skip and continued on at his side.
"Of a truth, charming Mercutio, I don't think that even one of those scoop-neck-blouse'd, red-lipt blondes would have given into that. Gold-leaf indeed. D'you go about assuring the ladies that even though you know it is the corset that makes them so slim and fine you would love to lead them astray anyway? My, my. You haven't heard me telling you that even though you have narrow little hips and no bosom to speak of and long feet that I find you to be just as seductive anyway!"
Rosalind stopped walking very suddenly and lowered her arms, her mouth dropping open, one hand moving to clap over it as though she had said something she fully did not intend to.
In the meantime she took notice of - this awareness flushing her cheeks again, though not with displeasure, for when they had been receiving attention due to Mercutio's noisesome though ill-fated flirtation with the statue she had very much enjoyed getting stared at for accompanying him - the looks this outburst had gotten her. Not all of them were quite disapproving - the Opera was known for its looseness, and for the fact that many who went there had, shall one say, personality - but generally there was an expression of surprise bordering on alarm there in those faces.
Considering how Alex had been treated, Rosalind wondered if it were not obvious that she was not a boy. Or perhaps being in Mercutio's company made her look more like one than she would have alone? He obviously was. She was just a daintier, shorter version of him - but she was rather tall for a girl, and if the strands of her hair that were not pulled back and tucked underneath her cap were a bit long and wavy, what of it? It did not look that out of the ordinary, not in this place. Rosalind felt a fondness for it immediately. Yes, maybe a job here - though what she could do, she couldn't imagine.
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Post by Mercutio on Jan 10, 2009 21:17:55 GMT -5
Mercutio pulled a face, flapping his hand at her dismissively. "To be truthful, I was not trying my very best. After all, if your innocent little face fell short of the goal I doubt my sly one could do the trick, and - what's this?" He pulled up short as she stopped, and it was very possible that had Rosalind not drawn such attention to her last comment he would have treated it as the sort of joke they'd been exchanging all along. As it were, he paid particular consideration to the comment, grinning wickedly as he slouched to peer in her face. "Do you?" he said, sounding some mix of very gleeful and very smug. Then he pulled the cap down over her eyes, laughing, and pushed her in front of him towards what he thought was the auditorium. "Narrow little hips, hmmmm? What about my sparkling eyes, Ganymede, or my long fine fingers? Come, let's find your lady love before you ravish me on the stairwell."
Petite, small-boned, Ganymede reminded Mercutio a little of his younger sister. He didn't recognize the thought consciously; if he had, coupled with Rosalind's outburst perhaps Mercutio would have taken a new eye to her shape. Ganymede seemed instead not as sturdy as his other male friends, not someone to brawl with but as quick of the tongue and wit as Mercutio liked to see. Even Ganymede's little admission was somehow endearing as it brought to mind a boy's shyness instead of a young man's; had Mercutio known Rosalind's true sex, it would have made sense too.
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Post by Rosalind on Jan 10, 2009 22:38:04 GMT -5
"What? Ho!" Rosalind's hands spread wide as the width of an angel's wings, her fingers curving and caressing the air with calm uncertainty as she took a few steps forward, almost shyly - although it was not timidness that led to such a potential characterization, merely the lightness of foot and the tilt of the head; she moved like a gazelle, and was unable to see besides. Mercutio, she decided, was a glass-half-full sort of person; she had meant him to take notice of the less complimentary parts of the phrase, rather than the suggestive part.
She stopped, turned her head back and pushed up the cap just enough for her sparklesome eyes to land on his. A very fine fire, like a diamond, actually; just enough blue, but that hint of red, caught from his hair, and the color almost too pale to be color at all. A sort of grey, she'd term it - hers were warmer, a blue, or maybe a blue-green, but then, in general, she had more color than he. And there seemed a hardness in Mercutio that she wondered at. She would have ascribed it to a man in general, but as Ganymede - and she often thought of herself as a he, and by that name, in the garb - she knew she did not possess it. And not all men scoffed at love. No, he was paler than she, if harder and stronger.
Her reverie had lasted just a bit long enough for it to have been a noticeable pause, and one that did not seem to correspond with the tone they had since carried; it was a notch too contemplative for that. But when she spoked, she donned it once more, although donned it over the seriousness she had not shed. "Wise words, and well said. Truly I must be desperate for she that, in an hour, has been my life, or I would not have been reduced your ravishment - oh, cruel parting, cruel separation, that I would seek comfort in a sow's ear, in a rake, devoid of her soft angles, of her soft words." She smiled a bit at his expense, but warmly, including him in the joke, sharing the amusement between them both, and tapped the side of her nose. It was growing enormously funny to talk of Alex as her lady-love; although their conversation had endeared her to Alex and shaken her, hindsight made her fonder than she had even been at the time. "But come, come. Shed your female posturing, my maiden, as it does not suit you, so that there is no alteration of sex between us, and race me up the stairs, if maybe you are man enough."
She winked, and began to run up them as well as she could without falling over and hurting herself.
((He can win. He has longer legs and isn't as cautious as she is. Just so long as she's only about 10 seconds behind when they reach the top.))
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Post by Mercutio on Jan 10, 2009 23:00:54 GMT -5
Mercutio was still laughing at her when she pushed her cap back up, and perceptive enough to notice her long pause pulled faces at her in the meantime; the bait did catch, though, and he reared up as though grieviously insulted at her words. "You do me a great disservice, Ganymede, telling me I am seductive one moment and a sow's ear the next! It's a good thing I haven't the feminine nature so sporting to jest at, or I might be wounded by your spiteful, jealous words."
He raised one finger contemplatively to his mouth as Rosalind sprinted up the stairs, eyes on her fleeing form. What he was considering would never have worked with many of his older friends, for they were nearly the same size as he, but a flightly little thing like Ganymede? In three great strides he'd leapt the stairs three at a time and caught up to her, and in the next moment wrapped an arm around her waist and hauled her off her feet like a bale of hay. He hadn't the muscles of say, Tybalt, so he was quick to throw her over his shoulder before his arms failed him. Like so many split-second decisions of Mercutio, what would have been ridiculous had it failed worked, and he slowed his pace to make up for the new weight over his shoulder, humming absently under his breath.
After all, if Ganymede were going to poke fun at his distinctly unfeminine body Mercutio could do just as well to point out the opposite in Ganymede's own. Mercutio hadn't many friends he could throw lift.
(( Mmm. I like surprises better. ))
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Post by Rosalind on Jan 10, 2009 23:20:49 GMT -5
((It is made of awesome, that surprise.))
Rosalind shrieked with laughter, forgetting herself, for although she could pitch her voice to a low alto it did on occasion tend towards being very high, and the first note of it was high indeed, and although lacking the shrillness of falsetto would have been enormously amusing to other boys had she been a Ganymede, and a boy herself. She blushed more than she had even before, not that Mercutio would appreciate it now.
"If I had the strength of mind to do so, I would, suffering from weakness of morals, doubtless grope you, for you give me splendid opportunity!" she called up to him, trying to keep her head tilted upward so her cap would not fall off and onto the stairs. She was having a bit of a hard time speaking and breathing at once, and the laughing, depriving her of breath, did not help. "But as it is, my brain is very weak and o'erfull with the blood that rushes down to it. I pray, good Mercutio - sweet, un-sow-like, adorable, gropable Mercutio! - put fair Ganymede down and let him apologize face to face for his spiteful and jealous phrases, but do not torture him so - quickly, before his lady love sees this emasculating shame!"
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Post by Mercutio on Jan 10, 2009 23:44:27 GMT -5
The shrill shrieks of Ganymede only made Mercutio start laughing again. "Maybe that's the point of this excercise, yes?" he called over his shoulder, resolutely plowing up the stairs but not quite capable of the leaps and bounds of earlier. "You should be grateful, you selfish cad! I am saving you from the agonizing burden of walking AND giving you ample opportunity to display that lavisciousness you admitted to earlier, and all I hear are- admittedly sweet- words to have me put you down. I don't know, I think I still feel the twinge of a cruel wound. Perhaps some sweeter words yet will do the trick." For all his light words, the expression on Mercutio's face had about it the strangest countenance of consideration. Without slyness or cruelty, he bore a thoughtful, narrow-eyed look that was quietly serious as he gave Rosalind a jolt like that of a man tossing a shifting bag of flour higher on his shoulder to ensure it didn't fall.
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Post by Rosalind on Jan 11, 2009 14:42:36 GMT -5
((Have you ever seen Enchanted? You know what I said in a PM about Rosalind? Giselle is like Rosalind on happy-making drugs. Only not in trousers.))
"Mercutio, darling of the street vendors, whose trousers need no benefit of apples," Rosalind cried back, talking become a real problem as she became increasingly dizzy and light-headed. "Whose eyes sparkle as though always with an excess of ale in the system, between whose narrow, skinny hips many a manly sailor has surely desired to come to port although surely only on the second date, such is the maiden's piety - I entreat you, put Ganymede down, if ever he has been fair to you, if his lips upon your un-sow-like ear did ever please you, if you owe him for his rescuing you from the molestation of the amorous apple-seller - he is already missing the sweet sight of your lovely face. Also starting to have a hard time breathing."
((So shall Alex see them like this? She wouldn't know it was Rosalind at first and it would be a nice surprise for all three of them.))
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Post by Mercutio on Jan 11, 2009 14:51:08 GMT -5
(( Yes, now would be a good time to have Alex pop in. I'll wait to post, as Mercutio would be about to put Rosalind down and that's not nearly as much fun for Alex to discover them at. ))
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Post by Alex on Jan 12, 2009 11:41:47 GMT -5
Alex, as always, was happy to take a breather from rehearsal. So when Castro called a pause in the proceedings--for, she had to admit, legitimate reasons--she wandered out the back of the auditorium. The noise at the top of the stairs was not audible at the stage, but as she drew closer she recognized the sounds of kerfuffle if not the voices of the participants. Hurrying forward--she was not one to miss a spectacle--she was delighted to see Mercutio, an unidentified lower-half slung in front of him in a most unbecoming manner for the foyer of the Palais Garnier. Which delighted Alex all the more.
"Mercutio, my only love!" she cried expansively, grinning shamelessly. "Have you brought me a present? You know my tastes, dear; surely you did not think a boy would do at all..."
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Post by Rosalind on Jan 12, 2009 12:00:23 GMT -5
Rosalind was very dizzy by this point, as she had indeed said in her unbecoming begging of Mercutio to place her on the ground, but she was not so dizzy as to not know that on the other side of her posterior was the lady-love she had boasted to Mercutio about. As Rosalind was, first and foremost, a creature of heart rather than head, there were two things that did not immediately occur to her that would surely bring a blush to her face later - one, that Mercutio already knew her unlikely love, and two, that Alex knew her as a girl and Mercutio didn't.
"Alex, Alex, shameless hussy! - heart-breaking, unhappy-making lass, you called him your only love!" Rosalind wailed. She thought to kick, but thought better of it as she did not know where Alex was. She was overjoyed to hear Alex pop up so quickly and hit Mercutio in the small of the back with both fists. "Rascal, unhand me!"
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Post by Alex on Jan 12, 2009 13:31:09 GMT -5
Her eyebrows raised almost comically--perhaps a side-effect of operatic acting--Alex darted about to the other side of Mercutio fast as quicksilver and popped up behind him, grinning into Rosalind's face. Had Rosalind thought to fear for her secret, she needn't have unless Alex entirely forgot herself. For while she had grown lax in her own guardianship of herself, seeing trousers on her friend cued her to the necessity for a little subterfuge.
"Ah, my darling Ganymede," she said. "How awkward a position you find me in. For of course, I meant to say 'only Italian love,' which as you know is a far different thing entirely."
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