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Post by Mercutio on Jan 12, 2009 14:27:04 GMT -5
Mercutio threw Rosalind back over the front of his shoulder with a vague 'alley-oop,' his hands catching her around the waist to prevent a jarring landing. Then he whirled on the heels of his feet to spread his arms expansively, smiling winningly at Alex. "Alex," he said warmly, but there was a hard edge to the way he held his mouth. "My friend, my pal, lovely red-headed poppet of my heart- if, say, there was some little trick being played here, some little, ah, subterfuge of sex, would you hesitate to inform me? Answer honestly and with the most charming sincerity, or I'll hold Ganymede up by the ankle and shake him 'til he tells."
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Post by Rosalind on Jan 12, 2009 15:03:54 GMT -5
Rosalind reacted first, punching Mercutio in the shoulder in a wonderful humor and with a great deal of carelessness, such that it might have actually hurt to some degree. "For the indignity of hauling me into the red velvet and gold of the grand auditorium arse first - to see my lady love." Her eyes flickered over to Alex' at that and her smile was warm and genuine and maybe a little giddy, not that it had been very long since they'd seen each other last - although to Rosalind the hour seemed long indeed.
"Alex!" She took a stumbling step forward - legs a bit bothersome with the recent disuse and head still spinning - to embrace her, nearly falling into her and pushing her back a little. Her hat brushed against Alex' face, and was pushed askew. Rosalind stepped back to fix it. Had Mercutio been paying more attention this time around, the fact that it was longer than it appeared in the back and pinned up underneath the rest of her hair would have been obvious as she tucked it on again very smartly.
"Yes, Mercutio, you find me grave indeed, for shake a Ganymede and out drops a Rosalind in disarray," she said with mock gravity, crossing her arms and placing her chin at a jaunty angle. "But such subtle subterfuge! Who would guess the taunting Ganymede hides a tender heart or the dainty Ros'lind a tongue of such insolence? Nay, in either name, you find me false. But ho! - from a thief, from you - I don't suppose you are jealous, are you, that I am fairer maid than thee? Come, confess: I have found you out! You too have donned th'ambiguous pair of trouser legs. Dear Mercutio, I did see where you so carefully hid those apples! A sad wench indeed with his hips," she added dismissively to Alex.
By this point, from the having-been-tossed-over-the-shoulder as well as the monologue, Rosalind was thoroughly winded, but seemingly very excited about something as she suddenly, spontaneously reached out and seized each by the hand, distracted by some new thing that had entered her feverish brain. "Faith, friends! Tell me true, have you met? Oh, well met indeed!"
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Post by Alex on Jan 12, 2009 15:12:49 GMT -5
Alex could not reply, even if she'd had a ready one, for Rosalind's precipitous embrace. Alex accepted it happily, confused as she was by the names flying about and uncertain what her place in this farce currently was. It appeared that Rosalind--or Ganymede--had meant to lead Mercutio to her friend, Alex, little knowing the Italian and she had met. But was Rosalind Rosalind, now, where Mercutio was concerned? Far be it from Alex to exacerbate the tension she'd witnessed within the girl on their first, and only meeting. So instead she threw an arm about Rosalind's shoulders, grinning up at Mercutio.
"If there were, good sir, should I be foolish enough to admit it in so public a manner? For if the party concerned were a woman, I should have tears and a woman's unending disdain. If a man, I should have a sore jaw and a black eye. Neither possibility is to my taste, especially when both of you titian beauties gathered together seem to promise jovial times ahead." She glanced at Rosalind, her green eyes twinkling.
"Ah, my love, why wish him a maid at all, when even these eyes can see the fine form of a man he makes? I know him well enough to know that, at least."
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Post by Mercutio on Jan 12, 2009 16:34:04 GMT -5
Mercutio eyed both Rosalind and Alex dubiously and with a healthy dose of suspicion. Ganymede- Rosalind?- was an excited little thing vibrating with good cheer, and her words were so light Mercutio could hardly believe she was admitting to what he'd asked. Alex wasn't helping. He scowled.
"Would you like me to drop my trousers to see?" he asked, and would have looked down them had Rosalind not grabbed his hand. "Hmmm, I think I have been graced with undergarments to-day..." But he was somewhat appeased by Alex's quick answer to the contrary, and distracted by the similarities in the two as they stood arm-in-arm. "Well met indeed. Alex is my lady love, you can't have her."
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Post by Rosalind on Jan 12, 2009 16:50:58 GMT -5
"You may have the lady all you like," said Rosalind succinctly, chin still up as, straight-backed as only a saucy youth can be - quite unlike the straight-backed lass who has been carefully, tediously taught the task - she faced him smartly with Alex's arm slung over her shoulder. She put an arm around Alex's waist in turn.
"But the boy is mine; and in tastes, good Mercutio, she is all that, if a less strapping strumpet than yourself." Her rather haughty, smug expression vanished as she smiled widely at him, eyes sparkling, and she leaned forward (still grasping Alex, therefore maybe, forgetfully, a little unkindly) and tapped the side of her nose with an audacious wink. "But you know? I take her advice, and as long as I have the maiden in you and the man in Alex to console me, I shall have you both as you are." Straightening again, she added offhandedly, "But what you take away from me is up to you. Mercutio, are you not one of those curious souls like Alex for whom the same sex is fair?"
It didn't occur to her that this was inappropriate or incorrect to say, and she said it, although not overtly politely, with no malhumor in her voice. She had simply, now that she was thinking in a more Rosalind-ish way, begun to think of Mercutio that way, considering how he had treated her when he thought she had been a boy.
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Post by Alex on Jan 12, 2009 17:02:30 GMT -5
Alex laughed, not at all adverse to the playful fight taking place over her, nor the slightly manhandling perpetrated by Rosalind. "Now, now, my fiery and indeed well-met companions," she said genially. "It seems to me Ganymede has hit on the perfect solution, for there is enough of me to go 'round, and 'round again I daresay." She was aware she was in slightly over her head with either of them alone, and verbally they were likely to run away with her. But it was better than without her, and her potential mental inferiority was not something that she lingered on, because it could not be helped and she'd done well enough with what she had thus far.
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Post by Mercutio on Jan 12, 2009 17:21:11 GMT -5
Mercutio regarded Rosalind levelly, a little frown marring his lips. He was less inclined to play and jest after so sorely finding out he'd been tricked, whether the trickery was intentional or not. He'd had to find out for himself, when he lifted Rosalind and found her soft in all the wrong places and lacking in all the right. He went to make a comment about his, the maiden's, wounded sensibilities but then scowling again found he could not when faced with two grinning examples to the contrary of a maiden's usual form.
"Aye, although a word such as curious seems to be putting a gentle air on it, making it appropriate, perhaps, for society. Better be it to say that I'm an equal-opportunity lech." He leaned closer, towards Alex now, turning what was a simple act into an elaborate bow. "I suppose I might consider it, but for the circumstances in which I am still, alas, Alex-less. Come, give me your arm so that I'll know you still love me."
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Post by Alex on Jan 12, 2009 17:40:55 GMT -5
Alex glanced between her two companions, wanting to make peace. Mercutio knew, and felt duped; that Alex knew. And she understood, though she had done her fair share of duping in her day.
"My lecherous opportunity is somewhat less than equal, but I have been known to make the odd exception," Alex said, taking Mercutio's arm. "And you, dear Mercutio, certainly fall within that category. Of course I love you. Come, let us all be friends."
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Post by Rosalind on Jan 13, 2009 10:06:31 GMT -5
Rosalind was generally a witty girl - at least, when she was Ganymede as well as a girl, for Rosalind had been a more than usually quiet girl at court, although just as quick to laugh - but she did not substitute words for action when the feeling was strong enough. And she was unusually emotional for a wit - she would blame that on the woman in her, which she suspected was more pronounced than that in either Alex or Mercutio, even if one or both might be a miaden sometime. At Alex' words, Rosalind threw an arm around each of them, which rather upset the balance of her companions in a very slight way, as Alex had taken Mercutio's arm already and therefore, Rosalind pulling them together on the other side made something of a tight circle.
Rosalind took to people quickly and was often hard to shake off afterward, generally deciding she found someone agreeable based on chemistry and conversation rather than the more volatile things such as superficial interest or polite society's own methods of choosing. She tilted her head in airy way, holding them rather snugly, but slumping a little, in a little boyish posture, smiling as she spoke, flippantly.
"I am hardly a lech, but know when I like; and try to be equal, but admit I am not always fair, except in my face, which changes not, and granted would favor you unfairly over many another. But what a sublime suggestion Alex makes! Come, let us all be friends! We shall look like a band of thieves. The men will be intimidated. The ladies will be enchanted. The authorities will most likely be often instigated. Provided that the pair of you run as far as I do, we shall be rather on the unstoppable side - don't you think?"
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Post by Mercutio on Jan 13, 2009 10:30:54 GMT -5
Mercutio was taken a little by surprise by Rosalind's gesture of pulling them all together, and his hands hovered like startled birds before descending onto Alex and Rosalind. Rosalind's line about the authorities made him smile despite himself, and his hands descended onto Alex and Rosalind like a cap for their copper heads.
"All right," he said, consenting, before his hands jerked in their hair rapidly back and forth, messing it up utterly. "As long as you stop mentioning the apples, Rosalind. I assure you I've no need of such superficial additions when I'm more the man than either of you, and more the man than many men, and now isn't that a pretty truth?"
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Post by Rosalind on Jan 13, 2009 10:50:04 GMT -5
Rosalind's hair was longer than both of theirs, and worn in a french braid that was woven in and pinned underneath itself in the back. Mercutio's ridiculous attention caused her cap to fall off and a few of the pins to slide out of place. She could feel her hair coming undone in the back, but was not sure what the appropriate reaction to this was.
Alex' calling her Ganymede and Mercutio's calling her Rosalind did not fase her; either one seemed equally suitable at this juncture. She pinched Mercutio's side fondly, although not necessarily nicely. "Pretty truth, bah! - beyond pretty, if the men you are referring to are the infinitely lovelier-than-thou Alex and myself. But I think there is something effeminate about you. You suit us too well for't to be otherwise. But, surely, you cannot expect me to stop mentioning the apples? They are the token, the symbol, of our love - and I have all a woman's sentimentality." She managed to realize in time to fix the problem that Alex had been cut out of the conversation a moment.
"I, you see, have mercifully rescued this waverer, who is so given to temptation, from a fruit-seller who would have ravished him in the middle of the market square before the titillated eyes of the populace," Rosalind informed her in a smartish voice.
For Alex, it might have been a change from the more purely-Rosalind Rosalind who had been so tearful earlier, but Rosalind did not quite notice it. Besides, she would have been anxious to have such a thing brought up to Mercutio. She was still mildly intimidated now by the way that he knew she was a girl, and might have all a man's prejudices now with such knowledge. It did not occur to her that the fact that she had duped him might have bruised his pride, and so if he was momentarily cold from time to time, she attributed to his impression of her sex, not of her hiding it.
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Post by Alex on Jan 13, 2009 11:33:08 GMT -5
Of course, Alex could not know what was going on in Rosalind's head--she was respectful of Rosalind's feelings, and conscious of the shift between public Ganymede/Rosalind and the doubting Rosalind/Ganymede from the box. But it didn't occur to her to wonder at it; she had enough practice hiding certain things that she was well able to understand such alterations without thinking about them. And she liked Rosalind, either way; she, too, gravitated quickly to people even if she did not stick quite so hard. At least, when it came to romance. She could be a staunch enough friend if friends did not mind her running about after conquests.
"But could you be certain," she asked, her twinkling eyes sliding over to share the joke with Mercutio, "that this gentleman would have objected?"
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Post by Rosalind on Jan 13, 2009 11:46:06 GMT -5
Rosalind tossed her head back in an airy, dismissive, mock-proud way. She felt the braid start to come very rapidly unpinned and she momentarily regretted such mobility.
"He should have objected sorely," said Rosalind firmly, deliberately attempting to cut Mercutio off before he could reply. "I am sure he is as vice-ridden as a hotel mattress but that does not excuse him. Had I found him indulging in such encounters I'd have given him a very firm spanking and then his arse might be twice as sore."
The bawdy interruption was timed for Mercutio's benefit and at the last phrase her eyes flickered to his rather quickly, sparkling with amusement and the anticipation of his response to such obvious baiting.
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Post by Mercutio on Jan 13, 2009 14:11:13 GMT -5
"Hey," Mercutio broke in, mock-offended, his eyes flicking from one to the other. "If all's to be words at my expense between you two laviscious lasses perhaps I'll leave; the fruit-seller would be happy to see me again, although- ahhh, ravished, wallopped, you'd think either would be just. But you, o knight, have proven to be very sly, to fool me with your innocent face. By that thinking I should have had the advantage of you while the opportunity was ripe, and I'm feeling rather cheated. Be careful lest I turn you over my knee or again my shoulder."
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Post by Alex on Jan 13, 2009 14:15:29 GMT -5
"It strikes me," interjected Alex, "that given the company he keeps, you'll have the advantage over Ganymede again one of these days." She grinned at Rosalind.
"But now, where shall we go? We're far too fetching, standing here, to be wasted in an empty foyer."
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