A boy named Sous

Priestly woke up slowly and blinked sleepily at the ceiling of the hotel suite. It was nice and dark at the moment, only little bits of sun peeking in around the drawn curtains, so he wasn't sure yet if he had a hangover. How drunk had he gotten last night? He really liked champagne.

He turned his head and looked at Dinah, just starting to wake up next to him. He wasn't usually the one to wake up first, but hey. This wasn't Fandom. It wasn't the end of a weird weekend. They'd been entirely themselves last night, just drunk on champagne and romance. That might have been a first. He wasn't sure. He'd lost track of their hookups over the years.

When Dinah woke up, they'd play-by-play it, laugh at themselves, and marvel that at least they weren't on the beach or in a warehouse. They'd suffer the teasing and curious questions from the shippers -- he was pretty sure they'd escaped upstairs before any hanky-panky started, and this was New Gotham, not Fandom, so there were no squirrels reporting on anything. She'd go back to detecting and he'd go back to cooking and getting ready for summer classes, and life would return to normal.

"Ah, fuck it," he said, and rolled over to kiss Dinah awake.

Normal was overrated.

[for she who's been modded. And SP.]

Priestly had spent ages preparing his outfit. Though he'd performed as "Sentience Freenik" a few times already, the Metronome's open mic drag night was kiiiind of a big deal in the drag community, and he was looking at it as Sentience's "coming out", as it were.

He certainly got plenty of double takes and strange looks as he, Dinah, Mark, and Tia walked to the club. Really, it was like they'd never seen a grown, bearded man wearing a bright yellow lacy dress before.

"Man," Mark said. "You look like you took a bath in blended canary."

Priestly stared at him. "That might be the most horrifying thing you've ever said to me."

"That can't possibly be true."

Tia smacked Mark upside the head. "I'm totally stealing that dress from you later," she said.

Priestly grinned. "Awww, thanks!"

[ooc: for the BFF.]

So apparently post-war on Dinah looked just a smidge clingy. Not that Priestly was objecting. Not even a little. He was still enjoying having her there and safe too much to worry about how much snuggling and petting was going on.

They'd marathoned Doctor Sexy yesterday, spent this evening watching bad kitchen reality shows, surrounded by junk food and soda (and veggies and water, because this was Priestly, here). Priestly had put several tiny braids in Dinah's hair and they'd done each other's nails, and then crashed out fairly early, Priestly steering Dinah over to the bed when she started falling asleep on the couch, reading a bit of Anthony Bourdain while serving as a body pillow before finally drifting off himself.

[ooc: for she who is mentioned in the narrative. Content note: will contain PTSD and memories/dreams of animal aggression and NPC character death.]

Priestly checked his reflection in his jeep's review mirror one more time. Clean pants, no holes: check. Button down shirt (with the sleeves torn out): check. Plain, inoffensive t-shirt (black, nice contrast to the red button down): check. Facial hair: trimmed. Eyeliner: straight and unsmudged. Hair: swept back into a high, short pony tail with a slightly emo-bangish bit going on in front, died dark, almost subtle purple.

"I don't know," he said, tugging on the swoopy bang before shooting a glance at Dinah in the passenger seat. "Maybe I should change my shirt again."

[ooc: for the permissably modded Dinah in Santa Cruz, or others via phone.]

Priestly was just about buzzing. He was hanging out in one of his favorite places with three of his favorite ladies, and his best friend would be arriving momentarily to spend a whole week hanging out. He was pretty sure he'd gone from excited to completely obnoxious about three hours ago, but even Tish was just looking kind of amused at him.

When he was distracted enough to burn the sub he was making for Piper for dinner, he groaned sheepishly. "Sorry," he said. "I'm a little. . . ."

"It's cool." Piper grinned back. "I'm excited, too. I'm really looking forward to meeting her."

"I told you you look like --"

"Your friend Karla, yeah," Piper said. She patted him on the shoulder. "So I'm all set for all the weird looks that Dinah will give me."

Priestly doubted that.

[ooc: for one. Content warning: homophobia, misogyny, and domestic violence, and other bits of nastiness. Tad sucks.]

Priestly poured himself his -- okay, he'd lost count -- next drink, taking a sip even as he recapped the bottle. He knew he was maybe going a bit overboard with the drinking, tonight, but the thought that tomorrow he'd be back in his house in LA, facing down all the questions Selene was going to have about his trip and another week of whatever crazy idea the producers had for the show was enough to drive him a little bit mad.

"Right. This one looks simple enough. We should have all the ingredients in here, somewhere." He'd done a fairly random grocery trip earlier, picking up some basic staples along with a bottle of wine and the scotch he was currently drinking. He looked up at Dinah. "You want some meat, or should we go for a light pasta dish?"

After rehearsal and work, Priestly headed back to the dorms to take a nice long shower. Which would explain why he was currently in his room, shirtless, damp, and grumpy looking, attempting to re-blue-mohawkify his hair.

No, he didn't have any plans to go anywhere. He was really, seriously just making his hair tall and blue just for himself.

[ooc: for one, but open pre- her arrival.]

So. Priestly had a date with Claudia this evening. An actual date. With kissing. And no extra people.

He wasn't freaking out. The way he was throwing all his clothes on his bed and wailing about not having anything to wear and comparing the various benefits of his blue "free sample" t-shirt with his yellow "lesbian" t-shirt and his hair was sticking up with far less direction than usual had absolutely nothing to do with freaking out.

Okay, so the flopping down on the floor with a shell-shocked look, surrounded by t-shirts, hair dye, and CDs for making her mix tape might have had something to do with freaking out. But only a little.

[ooc: Door and post are open, yo]