[ Open-ish ] Be Our Guest

[avoirfaim]

Who: Hannibal Lecter, Will Graham, Evelyn O'Connell, Cecil Palmer, Elizabeth, Lindsey McDonald, Seta Souji, Meg.  Unconfirmed: Martha Jones?, Agent Washington? Alice Liddell?  George Lass? America? Stiles Stilinski? Mr. Gold? Isaac Lahey?  
Where: The Dining Room
When: The evening of 4/16
Rating: PG-13, CW for implied cannibalism. 
Summary: Hannibal Lecter throws a dinner party.

A dinner party is not something to be taken lightly. It is the denouement to his great performance. Hannibal Lecter comes from on high to deliver a great feast, to feed the fine cows the innards of pigs, creating carnivores out of the unremarkable and shaping the circle of life and death in his image. The stage must be set for the actors, those fine meat dishes, in their costumes placed meticulously on select china. He had finished cooking most of the dinner at around 5:00, right when he had asked Evelyn to show up. The choices she gave him for tableware had been delightful, and he picked the right one for his palette.

He had asked the guests to arrive at 5:30, and he bustled around the dining room to prepare with Evelyn. Tables were pushed together and aligned carefully, a tablecloth draped upon and each place set. In front of each place there was a name tag. There were a few extra places at the end of the table, just in case of any emergency.

The dinner itself will begin when all those who RSVP-ed have arrived. Bon Appétit.

ooc: have some notes! This is only technically open to the people he invited to his semi-formal dinner party, party crashers will be frowned at and be added to his handy dandy dinner list. Not everything is Jesse, and if you want to know which is which ask me on plurk (I have one with all this information already done) or PM me. Obviously if I listed you as being in this thread you obviously don't have to comment in these are just the people he invited!  If your character would have not RSVPed or they would have RSVPed and it just never ended up going down no worries, pretend it did!  We can just pretend anyone who didn't show up isn't on that handy dandy chart up there.  

Comments

[nascensibility]

A great deal worse being the ancient undead, so her threshold for tolerating unsightly things is egregiously high. Jesse's murder was terrible and Evelyn aims to find out precisely who committed the crime, but separating herself from the subject matter comes a little easier when it was a person whose identity no one knew. Being objective isn't hard, not for her as a scholar and analyst, but if the victim was someone she knew...

"Someone identified the tattoos on his body," she explains, looking down the length of the table. It feels (oddly) endless.

"It isn't unheard of to find three-thousand year old tattoos on priests or members of the Pharaoh's family, but the design on his wrist is something called the 'Borneo Scorpion.'"

Evelyn raises an eyebrow at Hannibal.

"Needless to say, that isn't exactly a common symbol in hieroglyphic writings."

[avoirfaim]

He watches her look down the length of the table, two tables pressed together to force unity, and watching her is like looking into the skin cells of a chameleon, adapting to the surroundings. He presents the dead to people as a test often enough to know what a bad reaction is, but this one is good. This is one is strength and unexpected callouses of experience. This one is a higher quality of mankind.

To some, eye contact can be a threat. To others, a means of communication beyond words. He keeps his eye contact with her when she looks back at him, ever conversational.

"No, I can't imagine that it is."

He sighs, looking back down at the tag with Jesse's name on it before slipping it into his jacket.

"It really is a shame."

[nascensibility]

Evelyn is familiar with the dead. Not simply as a result of her working environment, but as a result of her poor choices made when she was much younger and much more insistent on being taken seriously. The plagues were her fault, after all - dozens, probably hundreds of people, lost their lives to locusts, the boils and sores, the fire raining from the sky.

She swallows hard and continues: "When he wakes up, we may have a better idea of who killed him...Either that or we're back to square one."

Evelyn waves a hand and considers the empty chairs in front of them.

"But this is hardly- hardly appropriate dinner conversation, my apologies."

[avoirfaim]

You won't find him, not that way. Hannibal was meticulously careful about how he killed Jesse, after he learned that death in Wonderland wasn't permanent. The concept of being found by her, by any of them but perhaps Will, is hilarious. Still the truth does not pass through the void behind his eyes, and he meets them to hers, projecting concern.

"I hope that you do."

But she's right, it's not appropriate Dinner conversation. At least, not without the rest of the company to chime in their praise. He smiles.

"You're right. Would you mind fetching the glassware while I arrange the seating? I think a tall-stemmed crystal Zinfandel glass will do nicely."

[nascensibility]

You don't know how annoyingly tenacious she is.

"Of course," she assents, grateful that in lieu of knowing her wines, she at least knows her wine glasses. The elderly Lady Carnahan saw to her grandchildren's etiquette and table manners, and though Evelyn's brother came away with a knowledge of all things he could possibly imbibe, she digested the more technical information.

From the other room, fetching a tray of glasses, Evelyn calls over one shoulder,

"Would it ruin the surprise for me to ask what's on the menu?"

[avoirfaim]

He looks forward to finding out exactly how tenacious she can be.

With Evelyn's seating card at one end of the table's head and Will Graham's on the other, he takes a look down the table at the alignment, rearranges one of his cards and begins placing the rest. Cecil next to Evelyn, Elizabeth next to Will, and so on. Special guests always receive the best seats in the opera house, after all, and only go downwards from there.

He smiles to himself at her question, waiting for her to return to earshot to answer.

"I have found it best not to ruin the surprise until my guests can see and smell the feast for themselves. Let's simply say gourmet cuts from meaty livestock."

[nascensibility]

"Oh, all right. Keep your secrets," she sighs with feigned dismay, re-entering the room with her tray and politely waiting for him to arrange them however he sees fit. Evelyn has noticed that Doctor Lecter is incredibly particular about the placement of objects, and she isn't keen to muck anything up for a party that she isn't hosting.

"I suppose I shall be pleasantly surprised either way."

Ha. Ha ha. Ha.