[NYE Party] happy new year and lots of fun

[nascensibility]

Who: EVERYONE, but especially you!
Where: Wonderland Ballroom
When: New Year's Eve
Rating: PG - PG13 (will change if applicable)
Summary: New Year's Eve Party
The Story:

[ Previously in the month all residents received an invitation to a formal event: a black tie affair to ring in the New Year. The ballroom and adjacent areas are decked out for the party starting at eight o'clock sharp, meticulously planned and executed, glittering décor to match the no doubt glittering attire as music pours into the halls from the dance floor.

Bars flank each side, service for all manner of alcohol unless a minor requests something, and the primary setting stage features an enormous clock for the countdown. ]




[ Where will you be when the clock strikes midnight? ]

Comments

[wildwest]

"i thought about it, though I likely wouldn't have even considered it were we still back in Purgatory. But here, there are things worth celebrating and holdin' on to."

Things to look forward to, things he wanted to keep.

[middlefinger]

"I agree -- I don't think I would consider it back home either, but things are different here. Better."

She had friends and a man who loved her who she loved back, it's more than she ever would have expected, let alone thought she deserved. But the thing is? She's beginning to think she does deserve it, that she has a right to be happy as much as anyone else.

[wildwest]

(That man loved you back home too, you know.)

"Never thought I'd call what is essentially an elaborate kidnappin' better, but I find it mighty hard to disagree."

Because things were better here. They'd both found freedoms in this world that they wouldn't have had access to in Purgatory. Maybe at the end of they day they were both just living on borrowed time in the midst of an elaborate fantasy, but it was one he was willing to indulge in. Happily.

[middlefinger]

(She does know that, but she also knows she didn't know it back home, there was too much else going on for her to see the truth.)

"Right? I mean, I know this place can suck a lot sometimes, and I don't trust it anymore than you do, but I also find myself enjoying it much more than I ever would have expected when we showed up here almost half a year ago."

A playful grin plays on her lips before she asks him another question:

"You know, there's another tradition people hold up on New Years that I've never gotten to do -- though I'm not sure if that one existed during your time or not. It usually occurs at midnight...which should be happening in just a few minutes now."

[wildwest]

Almost half a year ago. Idly, he wonders if she realizes the implications in that statement or if she even recalls the date he made her aware of on Christmas Eve.

"If you're talkin' about kissin' someone at the stroke of midnight, I can tell you that tradition is older than I am." Way, way older.

Not everything is a modern concoction, Wynonna.

[middlefinger]

Wynonna does indeed recall that date; if anything she feels hyperly aware of it now. A few weeks into the new year and they'll have been together for half a year now. It's very surreal, to say the least. She has no idea what to do with that. People usually celebrate that don't they? She wouldn't know, she's never had a relationship last that long before. This is all new and terrifying territory for her.

"That is what I'm talking about -- and how was I supposed to know that?"

She was trying not to assume, even if she still often forgot how much he might not know about.

[wildwest]

Six months with Valentine's Day just around the corner. Fancy that. it's a googling present ideas nightmare, okay

"Could have looked it up," he suggests. "Not like we don't have a veritable plethora of knowledge right at our fingertips, just a few floors away."

[middlefinger]

She's never spent Valentine's Day with someone either. So many firsts.

"You make it sound like I was thinking about it that much ahead of time -- besides the library isn't really my thing."

The size of it was honestly almost overwhelming to Wynonna -- she's been in there once or twice like when she picked up that biography on Doc but she mostly avoids it unless she's trying to hunt down Doc or Waverly.

[wildwest]

"Weren't you?"

Come on, Wynonna. You act like he isn't aware of how you operate. Or that you treat common milestones in this relationship like essay deadlines more often than not. One day he'll get her to stop trying to follow some unwritten rule book about how someone is and isn't supposed to be within the supposed confines of a relationship.

"There are people who tend to those shelves and could have retrieved a volume for you, had you only asked."

[middlefinger]

"Well, maybe a little. I've never gotten to do it before."

Maybe they aren't essay deadlines to be met at certain times but Wynonna can't help but be both anxious and eager about some of them when she's never had the opportunity for them before.

"I'll remember that for next time."

Or she'll try to, anyway. She's inherently lazy sometimes and it's easier to simply ask him things than go looking for the answers herself -- though maybe if she had done that before the holidays she would't have caught him trying to put candles on their Christmas tree, a fire hazard waiting to happen.

[wildwest]

Look, they didn't have electric string lights when he was a kid! Candles were the way to go. Everyone who put 'lights' in their tree did it that way. How was he supposed to know, especially when you had zero interest in decorating for the holidays? He knows better for next year — and he tries not to put too much hope into her being right where she was this past Christmas at ones yet to come. He would certainly like her to be, but with the fluctuating state of people's stays and their track record for fucking up good things...

That's not something to contemplate right now. He'd fight for her, but—

"Good. Might save yourself some time if you make yourself aware goin' in. And you never know; I just might find myself impressed with the effort."

[middlefinger]

To be fair, it's not like she's had a lot of happy holiday memories in the past -- who knew that having an actual Holliday in her life would help change that. It was easily the happiest Christmas she's had ever, and if they're both still around and together next year she'd be much more likely to help decorate things --

But that's a big if. One she would rather not dwell on right now.

"It would be fun to surprise you, I can't deny that."

[wildwest]

He falls silent as the countdown begins, people chanting from ten to one around them. Seeing as she has dodged all his attempts to kiss her in public, he's curious to see if she'll follow through with this one. Even trying to kiss her under the mistletoe at the winter ball had resulted in his lips meeting her forehead instead of her lips when she bowed her head at the last second. But she pointedly asked about his knowledge of the tradition, so perhaps this time...

—three, two, one—

[middlefinger]

It's true, she has dodged all of his attempts to kiss her in public -- other than when he caught her off guard during that photo they took at Ray and Sarah's wedding. She realizes it's fairly silly of her to be as shy about it as she has been considering she's made out with strangers in bars many times -- but he wasn't a stranger and this wasn't a meaningless makeout session and maybe that made all the difference.

And yet, as the people around them chant and count down the seconds until the new year she decides to go through with it -- it's not like they were a secret and who knew if they would get the chance to do this again, a lot could change before the next new year. She gets up from where she's seated to move closer to him and when they get down to one she presses her lips gently against his, wrapping her arms loosely around his neck as she did so.

[wildwest]

Perhaps it is kind of ridiculous, but he gets it — kind of. Enough to try and understand where she's coming from, at the very least, and give her the time and leeway that she needs. He doesn't much like it, truth be told, but it is what it is, and there's no forcing Wynonna to work herself out of whatever tangle she's been twisted into.

Whatever the reason (the occasion, the symbolism, the crowd of potential on-lookers distracted by midnight kisses of their own), he's not complaining when she takes it upon herself to kiss him. He keeps it gentle and chaste, hands resting against the small of her back.

[middlefinger]

It's not lost on Wynonna that almost anyone else would have gotten fed up with her by now. And it may not always seem like it but she is trying to find ways to untangle herself, to let go of some of that baggage. This isn't Purgatory. No one here is going to mock her or act like she doesn't deserve this. Nobody will talk about them or try to cheapen what they have by being like oh look there's slutty Wynonna making out with someone in public again. And she doesn't really care when people say things when that is all she's doing -- but what she and Doc have here in Wonderland has always been something more. It's never that she's been ashamed to be seen with him, far from it, but more it was the fear of how this good thing between them could be misconstrued if the public got their hands on it.

But the people in Wonderland are not the people in her hometown. She doesn't have the same baggage or reputation dragging her down (though she often feels the weight of it all the same). Still, it's nice to note that as they kiss, keeping it soft and chaste, that nobody notices. Nobody cares and it's a revelation. She can't help but grin broadly as she breaks the kiss, resting her forehead against his as she keeps close, her hands coming down to rest on his shoulders. Maybe doing that in public sometimes wouldn't be so bad after all.

"Happy New Year, John Henry."

[wildwest]

It’s progress; it’s something. It’s a step in the right direction, a push towards a sense of normalcy he knows she’s never had the luxury of possessing, not even when she was on the proverbial run in Europe. Because Purgatory and the baggage that comes with not only being an Earp, but being her, always just around the corner, waiting to haunt her.

But unlike him, nothing of her history can be plucked off a library shelf for anyone to read. They can brush up on Wyatt’s life, and perhaps that of his immediate descendants, but not her. The only way people will learn about her sordid past is if she chooses to share it with them.

“Happy New Year, Wynonna. May the best be yet to come.”

[middlefinger]

It's true, the only people who knows about her past, about the things she's done, are the people she's shared it with (and those people aren't many). For once in her life she has a measure of control over how people see her and judge her and that agency has been incredibly empowering. Without it she might not ever have been bold enough to truly explore this thing between them, especially as openly as they have.

"I think it will, this is the first time in a long time I find myself excited about a new year and what might lie ahead."

[wildwest]

“I share those sentiments, and not just because this is the first new year I haven’t spent sittin’ at the bottom of a well.”

That was certainly part of it, though. Before now, the years just blended together. One year blurred into the next, and he had no real semblance of just how much time had actually passed until he pulled himself free of that well’s depths using that rope she carelessly left dangling. He really does owe his freedom to her laziness — and his life to her own brand of ruthlessness. Had she not stepped in when he was taking on Constance, he might very well have gone through with killing the damned witch and offing himself in the process.

[middlefinger]

"I'm sure that doesn't hurt. Just like it doesn't hurt that this the first year I've really gotten to spend celebrating with people I care about -- and for once there are things to look forward to."

Which there usually wasn't back home. Her life before returning to Purgatory had been mostly made of her drifting through life, the years blurring together in the process, and even after she returned home...well there was too much to do with the curse to have much to look forward to. There was always another crisis for her to handle, little room to find happiness.

[wildwest]

"I can't complain about bein' free of that. Never did thank you for savin' me from that personal hell of mine, did I?"

And if he did, he must have been pretty damn drunk at the time, for he can't recall actually articulating that thought. (Which is honestly a possibility.) She has to know that she was the one who inadvertently freed him.

[middlefinger]

"No, you didn't, but it's not like I did it on purpose -- you make me sound like your savior when all I did was carelessly leave a rope."

Not that she regrets doing so, not for a moment. Having Doc in her life has been meaningful in a multitude of ways even back home but especially here in Wonderland. She would rescue him again in a heartbeat if she had to.

"Did you realize I was the one who rescued you when we met in Shorty's that night?"

[wildwest]

"A rope that spared me another hundred and thirty years down in those dark depths. We both know the witch would have been more than content to leave me down there for double that and then some."

For more reasons than he's aware of, but it's for the best that they don't know about the seal. Doc isn't stupid; he knows that there's more to this ring she enchanted for him than meets the eye, but he's not holding all the cards in that hand. And even if he were, it wouldn't matter much in a place like this. They can't exactly break Bulshar's seal while trapped in Wonderland.

He nods. "I did, but I did not realize that it was an Earp of all people who came to my careless rescue. You provided me with that detail and Bobo and his posse filled me in on the rest."

Nobody says 'posse' anymore, Doc.

[middlefinger]

"Yeah well, now she's the one who can suffer for a few centuries, she how it feels."

Except Constance Clootie will end up dead in the not too distant future back home, but that's something neither one of them are aware of. As far as they know she'll be stuck in that salt for a long, long time. Good riddance. Wynonna hopes she suffers the way she made Doc suffer and maybe that's petty and cruel but she never claimed to be above those things.

"No, you just thought I was a prostitute," She counters, though the playful grin on her lips says that she doesn't hold it against him that he did. Even at the time it had been more amusing than anything else.

[wildwest]

"Hey now, I apologized and then some for that. You were one of the first things I saw when I got out of that well, and I had no other frame of reference to liken your risqué attire to at the time."

It had been hard to wrap his head around how much the world had changed, nevermind how long he'd been down in that well for, when he first crawled out of it. That's partially why he gravitated so freely towards Bobo and his unsavory band of revenants and shady human familiars at first — one of the reasons, anyway. It was easier to be around a bunch of angry demons who wore faces he remembered than the advanced world around him.

"You know, I don't think you ever thanked me for savin' your hide that first time." His fingers drumming lazily against her hips. "You had no clue I had followed you. Not that you're a hard woman to tail or track down. We ought to work on that."