Gathering: New Year's Eve Gala

[concierge]

The annual Nexus New Year's Eve gala began at 8 in the evening. Too grand to be contained by the lobby or dining hall, the gardens at the front of the hotel were employed, with long strings of white lights forming a twinkling canopy from the front doors all the way to the hedge maze. The weather was temperate and calm, and the night perfectly clear.

Drinks were served at various bars set up throughout the gardens and lobby, with champagne cocktails being the specialty of the night. Wheeling through the crowd was a bartender with golden cart providing warm drinks on the go: Tom and Jerrys, rum punch, negus, and Irish coffee.

Crisply-dressed wait staff wove through the collected guests with an abundance of hors d'oeuvres for all different tastes. The Bistro remained open with a limited selection of items for those who were wanting something more substantial.

Above the front doors was hung a large, gold-rimmed clock counting down the last hours, minutes, and seconds of the current year.

Comments

[not_lost]

The night's still young and Fiona's only had a couple of cocktails — The Gallagher equivalent of a sip of lite beer. She isn't feeling anything yet, and is considering whether it isn't time to switch the champagne for something harder when she spies a guy who physically looks at complete odds with the awkward way he's hovering on the edges of the party like the world's most smoldering wallflower. Maybe it's just too early yet for him to be screwing girls in stairwells or something.

"You waiting on someone?" she asks as she slides up beside him, drink in hand.

[tooktheblack]

It took Jon a moment to realize the woman was talking to him. She was a lovely thing, slender and bright eyed, but it had been so long since he'd talked to a woman other than in passing that it left him a little dumbfounded.

"Oh, no, not really. I'm not in your way, am I? I can move." He wished Ghost was here. At least the direwolf would give him something to talk about so he wasn't groping for something to say.

[not_lost]

Fiona laughs and shakes her head, bewildered. "God, you're adorable," she says, and takes a swig from her glass. "No, you're not in my way. You're a hot guy standing alone at a huge party, I came over here to talk to you. I mean, I definitely can go away again if you prefer to stand here alone looking lost...?" She arches her eyebrows with a motion back out toward the crowd.

[tooktheblack]

Jon laughed a little. "No, you don't have to leave. I'm just awful at things like this," he admitted. "I haven't had a lot of experience with women and I feel a little lost without leathers and a sword. I do not normally dress quite like this."

He had donned the modern clothes in an attempt to blend in a little more but now he felt they required a confidence of him that he did not have possession of at the moment.

[not_lost]

"Do they have women where you come from?" Fiona jokes, even more baffled than before. She can't imagine the reality where a guy who looks this good isn't covered in women 24/7, unless—

"Wait, are you gay?" He does have a slightly metrosexual, 'artfully rumpled at the organic coffee bar' sort of thing going on.

[tooktheblack]

His time on the island had taught Jon that particular word and he shook his head. While he had been with a man, once, it was not what he preferred for the most part.

"No, I want women. I mean, I prefer being with a woman," he clarified. "I just haven't had much practice at it."

[not_lost]

"Are you in the army or something like that?" Fiona asks, because to her mind, a lack of eligible women seems to be the only logical explanation that this guy doesn't have someone on his jock everyday. He mentioned a sword and leathers, so maybe he's from some kind of backwards medieval world where soldiers aren't allowed to be around women.

[tooktheblack]

Jon nodded. "An army, of sorts. I am a man of the Night's Watch," he explained. Jon was grateful that she seemed to understand that he was not like other men here, at the least, because it made him feel quite a bit less awkward than he had up until this point.

"We are sworn to have no wives and hold no lands."