it's a dead man's party

[self_composed]

The guest list winds up being pretty huge.

To start with, there are now eight Bells. Pattern isn't bringing anyone besides herself, and Aegis no one besides herself and her Whistle, but everyone else -

Between Alice, the Joker, the rescued Queenie, Kas, Micaiah, and Sue, plus Ghosty who Amariah picked up on her way home, that's seven Whistles. (Stella thinks ahead: there is a soundproofed orgy chamber away from the main party awning. With a few nodes off of it in case more than one orgy forms; she can think of at least two other likely ones.)

There's an equally absurd number of Sherlocks and Tonies if you count them together. They have Juliet's matched set, Shell Bell's matched set, two other matched sets from Bell-less worlds (one with souled vampire, one both human), a stray Tony, and a stray Sherlock from Downside.

Amariah grabbed a random Libby on top of the random extra Whistle, but at least she's not incorporating anyone from home.

Golden's bringing much of her family and many of her friends - although Edward is staying home, that still leaves Elspeth and Jacob, Alice and Jasper with little Brandon, Rosalie and Emmett and little Henry, Nathan accompanying his mate and their child Kerron, Esme and Carlisle and their Lily, Addy, and Elena who'll get to see her brother. Golden claims that this is a conservative list and she could easily have produced another twenty enthusiastic guests. Stella doesn't doubt it. She puts up a few signs reading Please Conduct Adult Conversation Only Via Brainphone. Little Half-Vampires Have Good Ears And Perfect Memories. As a last-minute surprise, Golden has taken Elspeth's suggestion to bring Edward's deceased mother Elizabeth, too.

Juliet has, on top of her boyfriend and his - progenitor? - her tiny Libby, James, a tagalong thereto called Virginia, and a ghost called Minnie, plus Giles.

Angela's list is more modest: her, her husband, and their friends Alleluia and Caleb.

Shell Bell is responsible for half the Sherlocks-and-Tonies all by herself, a tagalong called Pepper, and also someone called Darcy and also Matilda. (Shell Bell is also the reason Angela is not inviting her brother-in-law.)

Stella herself is responsible for inviting Libby, Orfeo, Chris, Mary, Anna, Sandy, Eights, Chainsaw, Lazarus, Kolya (who is informed that it would be awfully inconvenient for a majority of Bells to all have to coordinate on pretending he doesn't exist when only one of them has even met him to be able to identify him in the first place, so he can simply stay home if he's planning to be hidey), and Bridget.

Stella sets up a name tag system. Everyone will have a tag stuck to them. Solo persons - a minority - will just have their names. People with template names and nicknames will have both stamped on automatically. ("Hi! I'm a Bell, and you can call me Stella!"; "Hi! I'm a Whistle, and you can call me Alice!" "Hi! I'm a Sherlock, and I don't have a distinguishing nickname yet but as soon as I pick one it will appear here!")

She conjures up a nice buffet of food and beverages which will stay its correct temperature until consumed, and assorted synthetics for the vampires (labeled not for human consumption), and dishes and flatware (all glass; even some of the food-eating guests might dissolve anything else) and fusses with the awning opacity until it lets in just the right amount of sun, and, what the hell, she throws in a stage in case Angela wants to sing or she decides to play the flute or someone decides to pentagon some other performative skill to entertain the crowd. She makes sure there are enough bathrooms for all the people who still need bathrooms.

She puts out a few tables here and there with little bowls of squares and triangles - a mix of her glowing red and Alice's shifty black - in them for everyone's convenience. She accumulates coins in those sizes faster than she generally uses them and has a great many, so there are plenty for anyone to dip and wish if something comes up. She double-checks to make sure the Martian ground rules prohibit any misuses available for those size coins.

Jane gets one of those high-tech holographic projectors, on wheels, which she promptly manifests in, drives around the floor, and makes faces through.

Comments

[temporal_affairs]

"D'you think so? I'm not as friendly to the general population since I got vampired up again. Only so much editing the theoretically uneditable mate bond would take. I am happy to bite pretty much arbitrary people, though."

[lookingforwardtoit]

"Well, how do you feel about being cuddlemobbed by alts of your mate?"

[temporal_affairs]

"I think the extant data we have on alts of mates is that the Emperor finds them disturbing and Alice is Alice. Oh, and other Alice appears to find hers perfectly unalarming and Orfeo has no special reaction to alts of his imprint insofar as that's data. I suppose I may as well see where I fall on the apparent spectrum."

[lookingforwardtoit]

"I'm sure Jokes can keep them off you if you turn out not to approve," she says, patting him on the arm. "C'mon."

[temporal_affairs]

Now, wait just a split second -

Is this a good time to visit the heap of Jokers?

[lookingforwardtoit]

Yes it is!

[temporal_affairs]

Oh splendid! That can happen, then.

Nathan is amused by the airlock setup.

He looks for his Joker among the many.

[manofmyword]

It's not immediately visually obvious.

But only one of the great big sprawling pile of kissing, snuggling, various-other-things-doing Jokers looks up and waves at Nathan with a call of, "Sweetie!"

(At some point since he went in, he's put his scars back on. That makes him one of two who has them. He was in the middle of making out with the other one when Nathan walked in.)

[temporal_affairs]

"Hey, babe," says Nathan. "The munchkin's down for the count."

[manofmyword]

"Great. Come snuggle us," he says, opening his arms.

[yourheartstrings]

"Mm, yeah," says the one whom the Joker was recently kissing.

[temporal_affairs]

Nathan consults his interest in this practice. Yep, there it is. Snuggles. Ungentle vampire snuggles, because he's pretty sure nobody in this room is delicate enough to care if he accidentally breaks something by going too fast, too strongly.

[manofmyword]

The Joker wraps his arms around Nathan and kisses him happily.

As Eights predicted, the rest of them pile on, except for Sue and Alice who are busy with one another at the moment.

[temporal_affairs]

Nathan is pretty comfortable with this. Alice is probably still technically a newborn and could do some careless damage, but nobody else in the room appears at all likely to accidentally render him uncomfortable.

[yourheartstrings]

When the Joker is (temporarily) done kissing Nathan, the other one with scars inquires, "Do I get a turn?"

[temporal_affairs]

"A turn at...?" inquires Nathan archly.

[yourheartstrings]

"Kissing you?"

[temporal_affairs]

"Well, if you're so keen on it," he says, and he seizes and repositions her rather casually. "Any dreadful things happen if you interact with venom?"

[yourheartstrings]

She cuddles up. "Nope!"

[temporal_affairs]

Then her kisses might be a little nibbly.

[yourheartstrings]

Nibbly is good! She likes nibbly!

After plenty of nibbly kisses, this alt pulls away to curl up with the Joker and another one—same shape, no scars—snuggles closer to Nathan and bats her eyelashes.

[temporal_affairs]

He's pretty comfy with the girl-shaped ones. If the boys who aren't his start sidling up he might have residual hangups about that. Kiss kiss, anyway.

[truthwright]

Apparently the Joker has been gossiping, or they can just tell, because although Kas and Micaiah are part of the general cuddlepile neither of them seems interested in soliciting kisses. And there's another female-shaped one who's curled up next to Sue and Alice, apart from the crowd but still touching Kas; she must be Petaal.

[temporal_affairs]

She must, but Nathan's not going to approach her, he heard the explanation when Kerron was looking her over for potential petting earlier. He has three Jokers to kiss. He finds this a fine number.

[manofmyword]

Nathan's mate steals him back after another little while. Mmmmm. Kisses.

Nibbly kisses.

There is a good time to bite the Joker, and it is coming up pretty soon.