Oh, this is the night and the heavens are right on this lovely Bella Notte

[etcircenses]

Who| Everyone who signed up for blind dating!
What| An evening of romance, or disaster, take your pick.
Where| The Swift Cut restaurant
When| 16th June
Warnings/Notes| The course of true love never did run smooth. Remember that if your character was not rolled in arena but you signed up for them to be here, you will need to mark their death on fatality reporting.

The atmosphere at the Swift Cut this evening is bustling. It's clear from the moment one enters the restaurant that they have pulled all the stops out for this televised extravaganza.

Every fire is lit and the air is filled with the scent of the roasting meat on spits over the flames; boar, beef, pork, venison and more. Pots bubble with the smell of hot stew, vegetables are being roasted in ovens and from giant casks around the room beer is being drawn. The staff are in full 'barbarian' getup, consisting of skimpy furs on both the male and the female servers but luckily for you they don't seem to expect a similar dress code from their guests.

Tribute's stylists may have had other ideas, of course.

The giant room has been clearly divided. Tribute's will find themselves directed to one side while trueborn citizens of Panem and petitioned out individuals are brought to the other. It is left up to them to find their table with the number they will be handed upon entering the restaurant. Whether they are the first to arrive at their table is a matter of chance but they can be sure that a cameraman will always be there to capture the moment of realisation on both participants faces when they realise who their date is.

Once everyone is seated the music will begin the play. Minstrels strum lutes and harps, their voices filling the air softly with traditional medieval ballads. There is a space set aside for dancing if anyone is in the mood.

Throughout the evening, and certainly at the end, Tribute's and Capitolites will find themselves sporadically approached by the show host to be asked questions about how they feel the evening is going. It's up to them how honestly they answer, though they should remember the camera's are always watching.

Comments

[clotting]

"Fine. I'm determined to be offended that I have to mingle below my class." She takes a deeper sip, one that betrays just how comfortable she is with heavy drinking. The apples of her cheek have a certain flush to them.

"It isn't personal."

[president_evil]

"There." The smirk was back. The same as the one he'd sent her that afternoon in the coffee shop. "Isn't that better?"

He reached for his wine; gave it an idle swirl around the bowl of the glass.

"But you know we're not really that different. I'm not particularly pleased by the turn of events either. I have tributes I could be minding; Peacekeeping duties I could be tending to..." A world to be rebuilding in his image. "I was volunteered for this evening's activities."

[clotting]

"You poor thing." Temple rolls her eyes and takes another drink, then places the alcohol on the edge of the table, folding her arms across her chest. "I suppose I should be thanking them for hamstringing the District Eleven Mentor, since your Tributes are fighting mine for the crown and unlike some of us here, I have actual stakes in the winner."

[president_evil]

"Difficult times for all," he agreed, as if he hadn't heard her sarcasm. "Hopefully if you do lose anyone while we're wasting our time together, they will at the very least be returned to you."

He drank, the wine a bloody smear as the glass tipped and righted again.

"I was recently informed my best competitor shan't be joining us for another arena."

And while he could care less individually, he was bitter that the Capitol demanded results, and then hampered his best chance for them.

[clotting]

"Oh? And who was that?" A basket of bread gets puts on the table, and Temple takes a piece with one manicured hand and places it on a plate before she begins to cut it with a fork and knife, something that comes naturally to her only because she's spent years imitating Capitolites who so rarely eat with their hands.

"I'm still not used to them coming back. It's like they want me to be surrounded by the walking dead every day that I walk into work. It's obscene."

[president_evil]

Wesker inhaled, sniffing at the mix of garlic and butter, but kept his hands to himself. Satisfied in playing pretend with his wine.

"Aragorn." He gestured elegantly with one hand before she could speak. "I know he wasn't especially popular, but when it comes to the luck of the draw, beggars can't be choosers."

[clotting]

"Well, if there's anything I've learned from my years in the Games, it's that even the least expected Tributes can become Victors. Then again, I've never produced a Victor myself, so take that as you will."

She takes a dainty bite. "Maybe you should have had Aragorn's face shaved and hair brushed. He had good features."

[president_evil]

"Who says we didn't?" he asked, a pale eyebrow arching about the ebony lenses of his glasses.

We, of course, being the stylist team as Wesker himself couldn't have cared less how often Aragorn chose to shave. It was fortunate when substance and style could walk hand-in-hand, but the former would always come first in his book when it came down to a choice. (There was a reason most of Umbrella's biological creations looked like they'd crawled off the pages of a Lovecraftian horror.)

"It was accepted that surely someone would enjoy the bastard Amish aesthetic."

[clotting]

"Amish?" Temple bats her big false lashes at Wesker, head cocking to the side and brow crinkling slightly. "I'm afraid I don't know what that means."

Unlike plenty of Capitolites, Temple's not content to not know a term. There are plenty of skills she hasn't bothered to learn, but she needs to be able to maintain a conversation easily if she hopes to blend in to the Capitol's culture. Rote curiosity has become a key to her survival here.

[president_evil]

"Ah, yes. Of course," Wesker purred, as if he'd merely forgotten that the order didn't exist in Panem, and hadn't made the reference knowingly. Chosen it specifically because she wouldn't recognize it.

"In my world, Amish are a group of traditionalist religious followers. Known primarily for simple living, plain dress, and a refusal to adopt the conveniences of modern technology. Upon marriage, an Amish male will stop shaving his beard allowing it grow as a symbol of having become a man."

His head cocked.

"Perhaps Aragorn thought he would find himself lacking without his."

[clotting]

"Well, that sounds like a very boring way to live. Practically a District way, really. Out there they like to pretend that deprivation is a noble lifestyle choice and not just necessity."

Temple says that as if she were not a Districter herself, as if at best she were always a Capitolite just plucked from a circumstance that didn't fit her and taken to her rightful place here in the city.

"Are you going to eat or are you going to make me feel fat?"

[president_evil]

"Whatever helps one sleep at night," he purred, lightly amused, wine making lazy laps around the bottom of his glass with the gentle, idle flex of his wrist.

The picture of ease, he raised a pale - curious - eyebrow.

"I don't, as a rule. I have particular tastes that the Capitol generously caters to. But if it would make you more comfortable...?"

He trailed off, waiting pointedly.

[clotting]

"Indeed."

Temple purses her lips as she honestly considers the proposition. Would she rather be the only one eating (or, for the most part, just tossing back alcohol from her ever-filled wine glass) or would she rather her date - whom she doesn't especially like, for very few reasons of his own - uncomfortably suffer for her pleasure?

Is she a sadist or is she just sad?

"Does it make you sick or does it just not please your appetite?"

[president_evil]

"That it does not appease my appetite, would be more apt," he said, with a clinical detachment surprising for one discussing himself.

It was, in the grand scheme, a benefit - being free of most chains of the body - and in the face of all at he'd gained....

"I can still consume and process food the same as I once did, but it's superfluous. I indulge, on occasion, for atheistic purposes."

And for the memory - of what wine, what steak, what fresh fruits, had tasted like.

Of what it had felt like to be satisfied.

[clotting]

"I'm sorry." It comes out of Temple naturally, that sort of sympathy that can cross even the boundaries she so eagerly draws.

"But yes, then, I would appreciate you joining me in dining, so that the next tabloid that runs with my face on it isn't about how I must be pregnant and eating for two or about my cellulite."

[president_evil]

"Ah, the twenty-four newsday," Wesker drawled, raising his glass and finishing his wine one last bloody drag. The hovering waiter leaped to refill it before he'd even fully set it down again. "Not one of the things I missed most after the end of the world."

It had certainly made his job easier, no longer being held to the court of public opinion. ...Would have made it all the more simple here, if he weren't having to sneak the whole way.

Before the waiter could escape again - bottle clinking nervously against the lip of the glass - Wesker turned to him, ordering without preamble.

"The steak. Rare. Yes, to the asparagus, no, to the potato."

Finished, he looked back Temple, opening his hand in a 'and you?' gesture.

[clotting]

"What was the thing you missed most at the end of the world?"

She raises an eyebrow, not trying to prod around for information but to be the more polite dinner date than she has been thus far. There are some topics that are best not discussed over dinner, but since their Mentor status is already on the table and is, as far as Temple's concerned, the most vulgar subject they could talk about, the apocalypse is fair game.

She gets a salad and more alcohol.

[president_evil]

Wesker snorted lowly - more breath than anything - lip twitching against the lip of his glass. A salad. Both of them to their airs then.

Taking a long drink, he considered her question. Likely, she expected some heartfelt confession - lost loves, dear friends, childhood homes.... Wesker had had no such things to lose. And even if he had, he wasn't the weeping type. (And the slower he swallowed, the more he imagined what the wine was supposed to taste like. The flowery description from the menu blooming sluggishly across his leaded taste buds.)

"Fresh air," he said finally, stroking the stem of his glass with the pad of one gloved finger. "The same recycled air after four years wears on the back of your throat. Like a unquenchable thirst."

[clotting]

Temple doesn't expect a heartfelt confession, truly; those aren't the sort of guts that end up on the table during a dinner date. They're squirreled and hoarded away for those private moments with just you, where no one else can feast on any of that pain you so kept for yourself.

"Where I'm from, you can't actually taste the air for all the chemicals in it. The dyes, you know. For blue jeans and wools and yarn." She picks at a leaf. "I used to not notice. Now whenever I go back there I can hardly breathe at all."

[president_evil]

"It could be worse," he replied smoothly, eyebrows lifting, his head cocking. "You could be from District 10."

If there was one thing they could surely agree on, it was sneering superiority over the districts.

"Imagine what their air must taste like."

[clotting]

"I don't have to imagine. I've been, back when they did Victory tours." Back when there were real Victors, she doesn't have to say, because the art of discourse is to leave the jabs unspoken and thus deniable.

"Although the worst is District Four, honestly. It all smells like salt."

[president_evil]

It was a neat little cut, that purposeful distinction. Clean enough that Wesker had to give her a point for it. Not because he bought it for a second, but because at least he had an armed opponent.

There were duller tables he could seated at.

"That's true, you've enjoyed time in all of Panem's varied Districts, haven't you? ...Tell me, how did you find District 11? I wonder what it was like - before."

[clotting]

"I think most places lose their luster once you've spent long enough in the Capitol, but at the time I thought the orchards were quite nice. The people, not so much. Districters are the same everywhere, Mr. Wesker." The pokes at her salad. "Uncivilized."

Start Wrapping Up?

[president_evil]

"My sight-seeing was limited," he replied. "Inclement weather, I'm afraid."

The standing peacekeeper force and the curfew went unsaid.

"But I do have a certain fondness for orchards myself." He didn't imagine Temple would acknowledge the joke even she did recall his victory - that imply she found anything about him important to recall - but he made it anyway. There were bound to be a few sponsors watching. "I'll make a note to seek them out, during my next visit."

Sure!

[clotting]

"You could have seen any twenty things more marvelous in the Capitol. Don't waste any time regretting your loss."

Temple hasn't watched the Games in years, aside from her occasional forays as a resident Mentor, which have decreased in frequency since her marriage and the birth of her Capitol-Citizen children. "Why not stay here, in paradise?"