[color=lightgray][center][img]https://i.imgur.com/fp2QHJH.png[/img] [color=#4C93C2]Location:[/color] Grand Ballroom [color=#4C93C2]Time:[/color] Evening [color=#4C93C2]Interactions:[/color] Count Calbert Damien [color=#4C93C2]Mentions:[/color] Lady Charlotte Vikena [@princess] [color=#4C93C2]Outfit:[/color] [url=https://i.imgur.com/Mr1xTEl.png]Bro Be Looking SO DAMN GOOD oh maw gawd[/url][/center] [hr] The herald’s voice carried cleanly across the ballroom, rising above the music just enough to bend the attention of the room toward the entrance, and one by one the Damiens were announced. For a brief moment, it felt as though the whole of the grand hall turned to look at them at once. The Damiens had arrived with all the pomp and circumstance you would expect from a family of their stature, and at the center of that spectacle, Cassius found himself walking with a confidence that came far too easily for a man who still, in his quieter moments, felt like an intruder in this world. He often wondered if maybe that was the cruel little joke of it all. He did not belong here. Not really. Not in silk-draped halls under painted ceilings, not beneath chandeliers and royal eyes, not among men who wielded reputation like weapons of war and women taught from birth how to smile without ever showing their teeth. He had spent too much of his life in mud and blood and smoke to mistake himself for one of them. Yet when the room looked, he knew exactly how to carry it. Cassius moved at his father’s side like he had been born to this all along, broad-shouldered and proud. Black wrapped him from throat to boot in sharp, tailored lines that only made the breadth of his shoulders and the hard-earned strength in his frame more striking, while silver embroidery climbed across his chest and sleeves in elegant, aristocratic patterns that caught the light whenever he moved. A dark cloak fell from his shoulders in heavy folds, trimmed in pale fur that softened the ensemble. Gold fastenings gleamed at his shoulders and belt, a chain draped at his hip, and black gloves covered his hands with the same handsome refinement as the rest of him. The coat sat close through the torso, the fine fabric unable to hide the fact that there was a soldier’s body beneath it rather than a noble’s softness. And to top it all off… the scar over his eye, that storm-dark hair streaked in silver, and the sharp smile of a rogue that he wore so damn well only accentuated the presence he effortlessly carried with him. The center of attention had always suited him, for better or for worse. Whether on a battlefield or in a tavern… there was something in him that knew how to draw the eye and keep it, how to wear arrogance just loosely enough to be irritatingly charming. Still, by the time the family had advanced far enough into the ballroom to satisfy decorum and appearances alike, he found himself wanting one thing more than any dance, any conversation, any manufactured pleasantry under this painted night sky that adorned the ceiling. A well-earned, delicious, stiff drink. After the execution earlier and all the bullshit surely to come. He knew it was what he needed most. With a quiet word excusing himself from the orbit of his family, Cassius drifted toward the refreshments, already reaching for a glass before he had fully stopped. The crystal caught the light as he lifted it, amber liquid within gleaming rich and warm, and he took the first sip like a man greeting an old friend. [i]Gods was it good.[/i] His shoulders eased by a fraction as the burn settled in his chest, and for a moment he simply stood there with one hand curled around the glass, letting the music swell around him while the ballroom spun on in all its glittering excess. Then, without needing to look, he felt the presence at his side. [color=#4C93C2]“You do wear it well.”[/color] His father offered with a sly grin. Cassius glanced sideways, watching his father arrive beside him as the man prepared himself a drink of his own; his [url=https://imgur.com/vC25bML]long, luscious, and always voluminous hair[/url] falling to one shoulder like an artist's rendition of what a god might look like walking among mere mortals. Every inch the Count of Montauppe, composed and distinguished in a way that made half the men in the room look like boys playing dress-up, there was no visible strain in him, no crack in the polished exterior, only that measured calm of his and the sort of presence that never needed to demand attention because it had long ago grown accustomed to receiving it. They were not alike in every way, but yet they were unmistakably father and son. Both in appearance and in mystique. [color=lightsteelblue]“The drink?”[/color] Cassius bantered, swirling the liquor in his glass before taking another sip. [color=lightsteelblue]“I’ll agree with you there, father.”[/color] A quiet huff of amusement left Calbert through his nose as the man continued. [color=#4C93C2]“Not the drink.”[/color] His father’s gaze drifted over the ballroom before returning to him. [color=#4C93C2]“All of this.”[/color] Cassius let the words sit between them for a moment. Around them, servants glided by with trays of delicacies and nobility continued their little ritual of being seen seeing one another, but here, at the edge of the drinks table, the moment narrowed down into something smaller that somehow felt like the two of them were all alone. [color=lightsteelblue]“You make it sound as though I’ve passed some test.”[/color] [color=#4C93C2]“Would you rather I say you have exceeded expectation?”[/color] That earned the faintest twitch of a grin from Cassius despite himself. He turned his glass in his hand and shook his head once. [color=lightsteelblue]“I suppose I should be flattered you had expectations at all.”[/color] Calbert regarded him for a beat, the sort of look only fathers could give when they were deciding how much truth the moment could bear. [color=#4C93C2]“Cassius.”[/color] His voice softened, not weak or uncertain, merely stripped of some of its usual performance. [color=#4C93C2]“You are my son. Of course I had expectations. The pleasant surprise has been in how often you surpass them.”[/color] There it was. That realness…that thing that made all of this more complicated. It would have been easier, perhaps, if Calbert had been cold from the beginning, if he had treated Cassius like a stain on his bloodline, an inconvenience, a secret returned to embarrass him. Cassius had known men like that, had prepared for one… But the full package of what he got in Calbert was something that he had never been prepared to face. Instead of coldness, Calbert had opened the door with a father’s love. Imperfect, and not without complication, but he had met him with dignity all the same, and there were nights Cassius hated how much that meant to him. He stared out over the ballroom rather than at his father. [color=lightsteelblue]“You’ve been better to me than most men would have been.”[/color] [color=#4C93C2]“Most men are not me.”[/color] The answer came so smoothly, so simply, that Cassius almost laughed. It was vain, of course. Completely self-assured. It was the exact kind of thing he would have said in such a moment, but yet still… it was somehow entirely [i]Calbert[/i] of him. But most of all, it was not untrue. [color=lightsteelblue]“No,”[/color] Cassius murmured. [color=lightsteelblue]“They are not.”[/color] A silence settled then, though it was not empty. Calbert let it breathe, which Cassius noticed. The Count never wasted silence. He used it, shaped it, let a man fill it with his own thoughts until the conversation had already advanced without either of them saying a word. Cassius had learned that much about him quickly. Thankfully he had always been a fast learner in regards to people. When Calbert finally spoke again, his tone remained calm, though the undercurrent had changed. [color=#4C93C2]“I heard you were seen with her again.”[/color] The Count addressed. Cassius closed his eyes briefly and let out a slow exhale, his jaw already tightening before he could help it. [color=lightsteelblue]“You’ll have to be more specific. I’ve been seen with countless “hers”…in quite a number of compromising situations in my life.”[/color] Cas quipped. [color=#4C93C2]“Charlotte Vikena.”[/color] The name hit him somewhere low and irritated, somewhere already bruised from too many thoughts that Cassius had no interest in examining tonight. He tipped the rest of the liquor back and set the empty glass aside before reaching for another with a restraint that felt noble enough to deserve applause. [color=lightsteelblue]“You do have a remarkable talent for knowing my every move.”[/color] [color=#4C93C2]“And you,”[/color] Calbert replied, [color=#4C93C2]“have a remarkable talent for finding yourself near that girl each time I begin to believe the matter settled.”[/color] Cassius took a slower drink from the new glass, more to buy himself a second than because he needed it. [color=lightsteelblue]“There is nothing to settle.”[/color] Calbert’s expression did not sharpen, but something in his gaze did. [color=#4C93C2]“You continue to insist that, yes.”[/color] [color=lightsteelblue]“Because it’s true.”[/color] [color=#4C93C2]“Is it?”[/color] Cassius turned then, meeting his father fully at last. [color=lightsteelblue]“What exactly is it you want from me here, Father?”[/color] he asked, the word still strange enough in his mouth that it carried a weight of its own. [color=lightsteelblue]“An oath? A confession? Or would you simply prefer I start avoiding half of Sorian to ensure I have not been in the presence of any man or woman who could have possibly breathed the same air as Lady Vikena?”[/color] For another man, that might have been insolence enough to sour the whole exchange. For Calbert, it only drew a small, almost rueful breath. [color=#4C93C2]“I want,”[/color] he said carefully, [color=#4C93C2]“for the son I have only just been gifted to understand that caution is not the same thing as cruelty, and concern is not the same thing as control, no matter how often you may choose to interpret it that way.”[/color] Cassius’s eyes narrowed slightly. There it was too, the other half of him, the one that could make affection sound so perilously close to strategy. The business man. The one that had dealings with the Black Rose. The one that smiled at noble tables and shook hands in the shadows with scum like Alexander Deacon. [color=lightsteelblue]“And I want,”[/color] Cassius returned, voice quieter now, [color=lightsteelblue]“for the father I’ve only just met to understand that some of us spent enough of our lives being ordered about by men with too much power and too little conscience that we no longer bow to anyone whose concern feels all too similar to a game of chess.”[/color] The music swelled somewhere behind them as a longer pause stretched between the two men this time. Laughter rang out from another cluster of nobles. Somewhere farther off, crystal chimed against crystal. Calbert did not flinch at the bluntness of his son’s words. If anything, his eyes softened. [color=#4C93C2]“You think I do not hear the accusation tucked inside that.”[/color] Cassius looked away first, which annoyed him immediately. [color=lightsteelblue]“You only hear what you want.”[/color] His father turned his own glass slowly between elegant fingers, studying the liquor as though it contained something worth examination. When he spoke again, the arrogance was gone from him, or at least banked low enough to be almost invisible. [color=#4C93C2]“You are not wrong to question such things.”[/color] He glanced at Cassius then. [color=#4C93C2]“Nor are you wrong to resent the fact that you arrived in my life already old enough to need to.”[/color] That landed harder than Cassius wanted it to. Because in some ways, that was the shape of it, wasn’t it. Not boy and father. Not really. They had skipped the easy years, the years when trust might have been built. They had met instead as men, both fully made in their own ways, both already carrying too much of the world on their shoulders. [color=lightsteelblue]“I don’t know what to do with this,”[/color] Cassius admitted before he could stop himself, his voice low enough that it almost disappeared beneath the music. [color=lightsteelblue]“With any of it. This family… this name…you.”[/color] Calbert was quiet a long moment, and when he answered, there was something unexpectedly bare in it. [color=#4C93C2]“Neither do I, entirely.”[/color] That made Cassius look at him again. Calbert Damien, Count of Montauppe, smooth-tongued master of rooms, admitting uncertainty in the middle of a grand ballroom when otherwise he glowed like a dream. [color=#4C93C2]“But I know I would rather try and fail than not try at all.”[/color] His mouth curved faintly, though there was no mockery in it. [color=#4C93C2]“And I know that whatever suspicion you may carry toward me, whatever grievances may yet bloom between us, none of that changes what you are.”[/color] His gaze held steady on Cassius. [color=#4C93C2]“My son.”[/color] It was possessive, and paternal. It was, in its own way, deeply sincere. And it was so very Calbert that Cassius once again almost did laugh then, only the sound died before it reached his mouth. For a moment, neither of them said anything at all. Then Calbert lifted his glass for a toast between them and them alone. His voice, when it came, was smooth again, but not empty of feeling. [color=#4C93C2]“Tonight and forevermore, as family.”[/color] Cassius looked at the raised glass, then at his father’s face, and found there the same impossible feelings he had been grappling with since stepping into this man’s orbit. Affection, mistrust, the understanding of the darkness of the man before him and wondering where its depths end. And somewhere, deep down with Cassius… the yearning to be understood equally by this man. By his father. His jaw clenched. Still, he lifted his own glass and touched it gently to Calbert’s. He did not say anything in return, but the gesture was enough as the crystal chimed softly between them, delicate as anything in that ballroom, and Cassius drank with all the mixed emotions in the world sitting bitter in his chest and burning at the back of his throat harsher than any liquor ever could. And just like that, Calbert parted from his son and re-entered the mob of noble faces surrounding them. It was where the man belonged. As his father disappeared into the crowd, Cassius turned back to face the table once more. All at once, all the while, he somehow felt closer to the man than he ever had… and yet even though his face did not show it, even surrounded by dozens of people having the time of their lives, he felt more alone than ever before.[/color]