lostcarnival | ⇨ THE CELEBRATION

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⇨ THE CELEBRATION

Who: Everyone, especially YOU.
When: Day 60 - Day 65
Where: The Celebration
What: The carnival workers are invited to spend the week within the realm of the Celebration, the grounds of a party that has been going on for centuries. Accommodations are luxurious, but those with keen instincts might notice something off about this whole arrangement... (Questions can go to the original setting post!)
Warnings: Booze, drugs, sex, and everything in between.

THE CELEBRATION↴

If you observe that the layout of the Celebration grounds seem inconsistent, then you would be correct. In reality, what lies at the end of each corridor depends largely on what the guests of the Celebration want at the time - if a few people find themselves craving a drink, a bar may appear. If a group finds themselves wanting to dance, a club will open up. This goes on at all hours of the night, and given how many dedicated partiers fill the building, the services are well used. It isn't instantaneous, and the Host has to consciously decide to provide that service, but the changes are fast none-the-less.

► ROOMS: Each trailer pair will be assigned a room to themselves - whether or not it has two double beds or a single king sized bed seems essentially random. Hopefully you aren't too sensitive about keeping that space to yourself. The curtains at the far side of the room don't actually lead outside, but instead to a walk-in closet filled with the Host's best guesses at the type of clothing you might like. They may not hit the nail on the head, but at the very least all the clothing will be in your size. The styles could be just about anything, from any universe, but they do tend to average out to clothing that is Earth-ish. Either that, or clothing that looks like they are meant for elves from a high fantasy novel to wear.

► SHOPPING: If none of your pre-picked outfits tickle your fancy, plenty of boutiques and clothing shops can also be found around the grounds - whatever you're thinking of, you'll probably be able to find a shop appropriate for it eventually. Though, maybe it doesn't really count as shopping if you don't have to pay for any of the things you take back to your room with you? Unfortunately, from the sounds of it, you won't be allowed to drag all of your haul back to the carnival with you, so you better enjoy it while you can.

► DINING: There is no daily schedule to follow, after you arrive. You are free to attend the dining room whenever you wish, and will be seated at large round tables with whoever else may be around at the time, and can either order from the menu or most dishes you may think of off the top of your head. If you don't like the fine dining experience, there are also a selection of smaller cafes and eateries that open and close at varying times of day - and, of course, you can always call for room service.

► ENTERTAINMENT: There is plenty of live music around the grounds (not that you can ever seem to remember who the performers were afterwards) whether it comes to harp music while you eat or a full set of DJs in the club you found. If you are inclined to look for them, you may also find some cozy lounges with big screen TVs, and access to a multi-universal quantity of films. What's there or isn't there is unpredictable, but if you come from a standard variety of Earth you probably recognize some of them.

► SUBSTANCES: You don't have to be coy about it - just ask one of your servers, and you'll be able to get whatever kind of vices you might be craving. Drugs, alcohol, ice cream... it's all good. If this sounds like a nightmare for potential addicts, you would be correct. It's not uncommon to see people clearly over-indulging in certain locations, though guests are usually escorted back to their rooms if they take ill - only to see them back at it again the next day.

► SPA DAY: If you'd like to take a swim, pools of various aesthetics are easy to find. So are hot tubs, and saunas, and Host servants who are willing to give you a massage or manicure. If the party crowd isn't your scene, there are plenty of more low-key opportunities to indulge.

► GREENSPACE: There is one park area on the grounds, which appears to be constructed on the rooftops of other parts of the complex. While there are trees and greenery, there is no real sky that you can see - only the illusion of one. It may start to occur to you over time that no window or rooftop actually leads to any kind of outdoors. The Celebration really is there only thing here.

These are really just examples, and you can get creative with what kind of services you find offered while here, when it comes to generally mundane comforts. It really feels like the Host wants to win you over, as if you staying just a little longer has some sort of intrinsic appeal.

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Steven flicks his tail a little, the first obvious sign of him being at all conscious. His ears perk up a little, his eyes cracking open.

He can feel someone else there, and he knows them, but it's so hard to fit all of this information at once. He winces a little, as he tries - but he doesn't get up. He stays solidly laying down, and buried in Leafwing's skirt.

"Lars?" he asks. He isn't really sure when the last time they talked was, even. As he looks over to find the other boy, everything still looks funny. He doesn't like it, so he closes his eyes again. "Sorry," he says, not sure what Lars actually said but pretty sure he should say sorry. "I'm really dizzy."

"Are ya sick?"

Lars extends a hand to brush his hand across Steven's forehead, but his temperature doesn't feel unusual. The way he's leaning forward, however, gets a waft of that extremely unusual (albeit pleasant) colored smoke in his face. Lars leans up immediately, groggily squinting, and it's then that it occurs to him that even in an open space, it's probably not great for a kid to just...be around all this crazy smoke.

"Uh... Wait a sec."

His expression then becomes kind of perplexed.

"Are ya high?"

Steven doesn't know he's high, though that would be a logical conclusion. He's mostly just being doing what his friends recommended he did, trusting them with a degree of ease that was strange for even Steven. They'd given him some weird tasting drinks because they said it would help. It didn't, though, and now he's feeling even worse.

"We're taking care of him," Leafwing says a bit more forcefully, shifting in order to tug Steven away a little. Steven doesn't really react to either of them touching him. "We have him medicine to help with his headaches."

"Everything felt all loud..." Steven explains foggily. "But now it's so... where are we right now? I can't remember..."

He's pretty fucking high.

"Wh—are you insane!?" Lars stands up, gesticulating in disbelief to Leafwing. "Medicine? He probably needed—water, and like, some bread!"

He's interrupted by Steven's statements, and his expression goes from infuriated to something like stunned and incredulous.

Edited 2017-02-28 04:07 (UTC)

"That's it. C'mon. Up."

Lars steps forward again, bending at the waist to scoop his palms underneath Steven's armpits, dragging him off Leafwing's lap. Or attempting to, anyway.

Leafwing is instantly indignant, and the other elves will be quick to follow. Steven, however, groans reluctantly, like a kid who just doesn't want to get up because he feels sick or his tummy hurts.

"I don't wanna get up," Steven whines pitifully, though he doesn't seem to have much strength to fight either. "Standing feels weird... Everything is all wiggly and... And I can't hear the tree..."

"Hey, leave him alone!" Ivycurl insists, reaching out to physically interfere.

"You leave him alone!" Lars snaps, swatting away Ivycurl's hand with the back of his. "He ain't your pet!"

Lars feels a nauseating mixture of angry and incredibly anxious—he knows he's weak—he's a mortal drifting through all these insane realms of fae and other creatures, and Steven's a thousand times more powerful than he is at least, even if he's incapacitated at the moment.

But he can't just let shit like this happen again and again. Steven may have been powerful, but he was still just a kid, and people were assholes, and this was terrible.

Lars gives another heave to Steven. "What you're doin'," he grunts, dragging him out of Leafwing's lap in full. "is makin' him sicker! If you actually gave a lick about this kid, you'd get over yourself and let'm go!"

The elves pause, frowning at him super hard. Meanwhile, as Lars hauls him up, Steven will turn to cling to him instead, like he just wants the support and comfort more than he cares to distinguish who it's coming from at the moment.

The elves could keep fighting Lars about this, but Steven isn't fighting it right now, and physical conflict really kills their vibe. As a group, they slowly relent.

"Fine. Who cares," Ivycurl growls and then leans back against the tree.

Lars recognizes that as petulant defeat, because he literally does the same exact fuckin' thing literally exactly all the fuckin' time. So he settles with scowling, mumbling a petulant little "that's right who cares." Lars is grateful that being super abrasive as a natural quality of his seemed to be enough.

Feeling Steven cling onto him, Lars holds onto Steven's shoulders. He carefully rearranges himself, especially because he remembers he's still a little crossfaded, and offers Steven his back. Because no way does he have the upper arm strength to carry him outta here.

"Get on my back, Steven. You can chill out and I'll take us someplace actually cool."

Steven apparently crosses over from whining to cooperating easily enough - as long as he doesn't have to walk anywhere or look at things. His nods his head a little, and clumsily tries to pull himself onto Lars's back. Thankfully he is quite small, but Lars is also extremely noodly, so maybe it balances out.

He wraps his arms around Lars's shoulders and cuddles close to his back. His ears twitch against his neck.

"How long ago did you come here?" he asks. He means the first time, even though it's not clear. He doesn't really have any concept of how much time had passed at the moment.

There's some stumbling, and Lars is regretting his lack of sobriety as he tries to get Steven all sorted out on his back. But it works out, and things are comfortable enough as he walks with Steven on his back in a hunch. It's tough, sure—Steven's a little fat and Lars is thin and weak, but it's not so bad.

Lars is kind of absorbed in the sensation of Steven against his back; the warmth and the weight is something comforting and nourishing, in a way, and it's eating up all his attention, because he's fucking high out of his gourd. At his question, Lars blinks, snapped back to reality.

"Uhh," he answers eloquently. He furrows an eyebrow. "Dang, I dunno, dude. All kindsa stuff happened between now'n then. Hours, at least. Like...hours'n hours'n hours. Maybe 8? 12? 10?"

"Oh," he says. It seemed a lot longer than that, but also maybe not? Maybe it was shorter? Bluh. He holds onto Lars a little bit more tightly.

"I felt really weird and I keep... feeling really weird in my head," Steven rambles softly, wavering between being asleep and being conscious. "Like everyone was really loud even though they were saying anything."

Even before he got drugged, importantly.

Steven will have to clarify when he's sober, because for now, Lars is definitely just assuming that's the crazy elf drugs.

"Yeah," he says kind of uncomfortably, really wishing he wasn't having this talk with Steven. He feels kind of ashamed he even has any intel on it at this point, though it's solely due to the Celebration itself. "I dunno, man, it's like that. Weird, I mean." He squints, frowning. "...Mostly just weird."

It's alleviated his anxiety just about completely, though, so he's not actually complaining. Feeling comfortable with yourself and other people is actually pretty amazing.

"I mean... I ain't gonna lie, I think it feels pretty good in some ways, but... you're too young for this stuff." Lars shows his teeth in a snarling scowl. "Dumb friggin' elves."

"I don't think I like it," Steven admits hazily, shaking his head a little, his eyes still shut. "I'm really confused and... I can't think about stuff."

He's quiet for a few more moments, before hesitantly broaching the question, like he's not really sure he wants to.

"Is that really what they gave me?"

He hadn't known it was drugs at the time.

Lars nods with Steven's verdict; he thinks even if Steven were older, it wouldn't exactly suit him... It just makes sense to hear. "That's fair," he responds.

When they fall into the silence, Lars is kind of comfortably spacing out again until Steven asks another alarming question. He blinks, then frowns, looking over his shoulder. "...Did they ...give it to you? I kinda figured y'just got a contact buzz, or somethin'."

Steven doesn't really know what a contact buzz would be - he really doesn't know much about this kind of thing at all. But... he still knows that isn't what it was. He sinks down against Lars's neck.

"Yeah... they gave me something and said it would help, when I felt bad." And he feels sort of betrayed, knowing what it probably was. He assumed it would be something good for him, because he assumed they cared about him. He'd felt really connected to them and now he's really confused. "You think it was something bad?"

He can trust Lars, right? Lars has been his friend for way longer.

Lars makes an angry, loud and annoyed growl, throwing his head back a little as he rolls his eyes. "Those friggin' jerks," he says shrilly.

Then Steven asks him that question, and Lars blinks. Not being one who is blessedly endowed with tact, not considering how Steven might be feeling right now—especially since Lars is still a little messed up (he's a lot more sober after that confrontation, but still loopy).

"Uh, yeah?" Lars looks over his shoulder at Steven, readjusting his weight on his back a little. "Medicine ain't recreational, Steven." He looks glumly ahead of them, frowning crossly. "They knew what they were doin'..."

"Oh," Steven says softly, cracking his eyes open enough to look down at the ground. Maybe Lars won't immediately notice, but he starts to tear up after a few moments of thinking about that, sniffling quietly.

He'd really trusted them.

Lars doesn't notice at first, but when he hears the sniffle, his eyes widen, and he stops. He rolls his eyes up and sighs, and gently slips Steven off his back. Lars turns to face him and kneels, observing Steven for a moment while he tries to figure out what to say. He's... not great, dealing with people's feelings—he can't even deal with his own.

He thinks about how Steven tried to excuse the Agents, and he doesn't want to upset Steven even more—he knows he needs a reality check, but it's wanting of tact that Lars just doesn't have. He sighs.

He knows about this kinda shit—Steven doesn't. If he'd kept a clearer head...

"I'm not sayin' those dudes are the worst people ever or nothin'," Lars says—and it's true, because the people who shoot children are the worst ones ever. "And they prolly don't think it was a big deal, or they were doin' anythin' bad, cuz they don't know you. But you gotta be careful, man. Some people are rotten."

Like him, he knows—but even he knows he's not that messed up.

Lars puts a hand on Steven's shoulder, his expression suddenly looking sort of tensely torn with remorse; he's conflicted, trying to figure out what to say.

"...I shoulda stuck around. I had a feelin', but I ignored it." He was distracted; he wanted the people, the food, the alcohol, the senseless pleasure and mirth.

When Lars puts Steven down, he just kind end up plopping down onto the ground in front of him, frowning sadly and rubbing at his eyes. He still doesn't like looking at stuff, it all feels too foreign and bright, but he looks up at lars anyway, with bits of that fog still in his eyes.

He looks down again after a few moments, though, nodding dejectedly like he can't argue with Lars but doesn't really know what to say about it. He was being dumb. He keeps doing this.

"It's not your fault," he says quietly.

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⇨ THE CELEBRATION

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