void_whereprohibited (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
void_whereprohibited) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
thecapitol2014-06-12 07:15 pm
void_whereprohibited) wrote in thecapitol2014-06-12 07:15 pm
Entry tags:
pack the knives and pack the bread
Who | Hsiang Jiao and Cecil Palmer
What | Cecil's been invited to dinner! This can only end well.
Where | Penny's place in the Capitol.
When | Early in the new Arena, just as the sickness is beginning to spread.
Warnings/Notes | ...general warning for Penny; will add specifics as relevant!
It hadn't been a brush-off, telling him that her staff would "coordinate something." Some days after their brief network conversation, he'd gotten her invitation and sent his polite reply, and now here he was, being driven along a route he did not know to a place he'd never seen, by someone who knew both where they were going and how to get there.
This was a good analogy for how he felt when he was around Penny, Cecil reflected as he stepped out of the vehicle, as close to Penny's doorstep as was reasonable: As though he were being steered around unfamiliar corners by someone who did not necessarily consider his safe arrival at their destination a priority.
It would have been a lie to say he was not nervous. He was not sure how he was going to fill up an evening of conversation with Penny. Speaking was, in most cases, a source of confidence for him - his voice was the most famous thing about him, after all, and the reason he was even in a position to garner invitations to dinner from high-ranking Peacekeepers. But Penny was... she had a talent for making him afraid of what he might say. She had a way of rendering everything said to her the wrong thing, and Cecil was not accustomed to saying the wrong thing.
It was difficult to imagine Penny (Ms. Hsiang, he reminded himself) at home. She did not seem the home-y type. It was with the hope that he was wrong that he fixed a bright smile on his face - one that looked forward to being welcomed - and allowed the person who had driven him here to ring the bell for him.
What | Cecil's been invited to dinner! This can only end well.
Where | Penny's place in the Capitol.
When | Early in the new Arena, just as the sickness is beginning to spread.
Warnings/Notes | ...general warning for Penny; will add specifics as relevant!
It hadn't been a brush-off, telling him that her staff would "coordinate something." Some days after their brief network conversation, he'd gotten her invitation and sent his polite reply, and now here he was, being driven along a route he did not know to a place he'd never seen, by someone who knew both where they were going and how to get there.
This was a good analogy for how he felt when he was around Penny, Cecil reflected as he stepped out of the vehicle, as close to Penny's doorstep as was reasonable: As though he were being steered around unfamiliar corners by someone who did not necessarily consider his safe arrival at their destination a priority.
It would have been a lie to say he was not nervous. He was not sure how he was going to fill up an evening of conversation with Penny. Speaking was, in most cases, a source of confidence for him - his voice was the most famous thing about him, after all, and the reason he was even in a position to garner invitations to dinner from high-ranking Peacekeepers. But Penny was... she had a talent for making him afraid of what he might say. She had a way of rendering everything said to her the wrong thing, and Cecil was not accustomed to saying the wrong thing.
It was difficult to imagine Penny (Ms. Hsiang, he reminded himself) at home. She did not seem the home-y type. It was with the hope that he was wrong that he fixed a bright smile on his face - one that looked forward to being welcomed - and allowed the person who had driven him here to ring the bell for him.