it's no string quartet, but as the music softens and stretches, and the dance floor begins its steady sway, DANNY takes ALEXANDRIA gently about the waist ╱ @roomkeys
"quarter," he says, but he doesn't sound like he believes it. he amends, in the next breath, and more firmly, "no. probably three. what — you think four? no way."
this is an old game, and all but an obligatory one at that. everyone plays it, and everyone will continue to play it. half the conversations they've drifted past, between valet behind the front gates to the last hushing whispers before forever truly became that, step carefully in and out of play. they're guessing how much it costs. all of it — the dress and the catering and the open bar and the floor refinishing and the rhode island oysters that are definitely not in season.
right now they're on flowers. camellias and baby's breath, bulbous white roses blooming bigger than danny's fist, fat pink peonies, waxflowers and eucalyptus as long as his arm all erupt from the center of every table. groomsmen, or what there was to speak of them, announced themselves by their lapels visible probably from space. like everything on this estate and in this town it's impressive, if not for any defining vision or articulated taste but by sheer scale of opulence and the ease at which the people here loosen their wrists and say, let's do it all.
and it's not that danny makes these observations out of anything more than boredom. there's no stone in his hand. and, by god, this is an exquisite glass house. he drops these numbers, which have grown small and abstract in his mind, because he, like everyone else circling this floor and spilling out onto the over-lush grass, finds it fun. it's fun to compare, and to judge, and to find wanting. to know, from his own wedding with his own atrociously excessive florals, imprecisely how much someone is throwing to the wind and then wrinkle your nose — because all of that and the vases are clear plastic.
it's also a distraction. this is an old game, remember; easily recognized and readily played at this sort of thing. weddings. on dance floors. a smooth stone for curious ears to wash over.
danny smiles down at alexandria. his thumbs trace the lines of her hipbones beneath her dress, up and down, as the space between them vanishes. then it's gone. if he's lucky, it'll be the type of evening where he can pull her close and feel the heat of her, and all it will be to onlookers is just a husband keeping his wife warm.
amongst a waking sea of lightning bugs and threat of an inking black night, DANNY GIRARDEAU has just about reached his limits with KIT TURNER ╱ @precident
the veranda is nice, if insistent upon itself. wrought iron. intricate. evoking long and narrow evenings in a certain quarter along a specific street. the masonry under danny's feet even has the decency to look worn, although it seems half the guests downstairs know exactly when, if not by whose hand, it was installed.
it's all very lovely in the way extraordinary masterworks are, particularly ones owned by the sort of people who are comfortable allocating monuments to artistic genius and craft excellence to an annex best used for impressing people who will call it gaudy.
danny knows that he should not be, in any reasonable circumstances, thinking about the craftsmanship of the beveled leaf point he is currently pressing the fat of his thumb against with the full strength of his grip. only that the worm in his brain that is only good for crowding out dangerous thoughts exclusively seems to speak in terms of renovation, cost, and materials now. poisoned that he is now with talks of roofing and fluted gutters. he can't even be mad; he's done it all to himself, one eggshell paint chip after another.
and it's not, strictly, that danny is thinking about something dangerous. it's that he has one hand fisted firmly around the danger he would not, until this point, look directly at much less acknowledge. his fingers are creasing fine silk. the veranda in all of it's loveliness is an excuse; an escape; a trap door with teeth in the smithy-handled shape of old garden roses.
he lets go of kit's tie and smooths a hand over the exposed, damningly heartline-shaped wrinkling. as if this is a normal thing for him to do, with kit, and a normal thing for kit to have done by him. then he releases his trapped thumb, nail gone to throbbing, and wraps that free hand back around the iron railing behind him. like one of the immovable objects on either side of him might suddenly give out, but he isn't totally sure which.
only the lightning bugs can see, at this angle, how the skin about his knuckles pulls tight and pale.
danny says, "you know." like this is something they do: talk; touch; share oxygen, even on an open-air balcony. acknowledge each other as existing. exist together, alone.
"i'm starting to think you might be avoiding me or something."
FULL NAME & TITLE. daniel bankston girardeau. SOBRIQUET(S) / ALIAS(ES) / TITLE(S) / POSITION(S). danny, dan (rarely, mostly at a business partner's preference), bankston (historically; rarely acknowledged these days). self-labelled "entrepreneur", but priming to step into an official capacity at one of the girardeau family-owned media outlets (he's angling for digital, but his father seems inclined towards print), pending the outcome of both daniel's suit and the countersuit against him. AGE. twenty-eight. GENDER + PRONOUNS . cis man, he & him. ORIENTATION. bisexual. RELATIONSHIP STATUS. married. (alexandra caswell). ALLEGIANCE. (by order of importance ) girardeau family interests, his wife, caswell family interests, self. THEMES. disillusionment of the cinderella story, tolerance towards one's own misery, nature vs. nurture, loyalty vs. self-interest, love in the bucket.
TOUCHPOINTS. the murdoch family & enterprises. the roy family, succession. art donaldson, challengers. oliver quick, saltburn. rusty ryan, ocean's eleven. lancelot, arthuriana. gentleman thieves. the bling ring (real & fictional). tom ripley, the talented mr. ripley. robbie turner, atonement. jon snow, asoiaf. don draper, mad men. andrew cooper, your friends & neighbors.
BASICS.
( tyriq withers, cis man, he & him, entrepreneur ) ⸺ spotted drifting through briar bend lately is DANIEL BANKSTON GIRARDEAU, the TWENTY-EIGHT year old GEMINI. if you ask around town, someone will tell you they always order their signature QUAD SHOT OVER ICE, wearing A COPY OF THE GIRARDEAU FAMILY-OWNED PAPER — ENTIRELY FOR SHOW, and carry themselves like THE LIAR.
their friends insist they’re more LOYAL than IMPULSIVE, but critics around briar bend have a different story, usually involving A TENDENCY TOWARDS GROSS EXAGGERATIONS AND CRIMINAL MISDEMEANORS, WITH NO ABILIES TO BACK EITHER UP.
unfortunately for DANNY, the whispers circling their name lately seem to suggest he is embroiled in a legal battle with his "step" siblings over their father's inheritance clause.
DETAILS.
01. he's born and raised in atlanta, in the type of motel-turned-apartment complex that never lives up to the renovations and always looks more out of date than the most recent plaque suggests. he doesn't remember a time when the pool was filled with water instead of graffiti, but he does remember the way mrs. garcia's ceiling fan always spun in the opposite direction to their own. mary bankston, then known, works the types of jobs that puts her and her squealing 1998 corolla out to briar bend before dawn and back after dark. one assumes this is how she meets the big man himself. for most of danny's life during this period, he's most familiar with the shape of his mother's body moving in the dark.
02. bankston becomes girardeau with just enough time for danny to switch schools before the seventh grade schedules are printed and dried. he's thirteen (has kindergarten teacher mrs. lindquist to thank for that) and it's a matching set: the paperwork, crisp bedrooms, the black tux at the top of the altar to match his step-father's. the clothes fit so well they itch and tug, too close to skin he wishes would just blister and peel off already. but they're here to stay. mom makes that veeeery fucking clear.
03. there are (step) siblings in this picture, too, if you squint. but they've all got degrees as long as their names and everyone seems content with looking past each other for now. there's neither lifeboat nor shark waiting for danny in his new school, which comes up too quickly after the loooong lawn on the passenger side, where he sits behind his new driver. just the harsh surf of slim hallways and the tide of milk-eyed gazes that sweep over him. no one knows danny enough to torment him but it's a wave that looms. he grabs at the first rope: that's kit. then alexandria. they're not friends and they're not tethers. first, they're mirrors to danny. voices he can mimic and jokes he can repeat, postures to wear until they fit a little better. then, somewhere in the costume jewelry, they find friends.
04. they don't call it a bling ring, because they don't call it anything at all. this thing that they do when the humidity rises in the long breaths between semesters. they can never look at it so straight on. in last names and addresses, vacation dates and alibis, scores for pride or vanity or (least common) simple practicality — all of this and more. but never what it was: robbery. theft. grand larceny. occasionally breaking and entering, but less often than you might think. and they're all about as clever as you'd expect: too much, and then not enough. shit hits the fan, and step daddy himself offers an umbrella that opens on one condition: walk away.
05. you'd think danny was born here. in briar bend, sure, but here, too: in this suit and these loafers, ring and dimpled smile each catching in their own light. his handshake is firm, like the big man's — danny's calling him dad now, by the way, which is weird for just about everyone. and like dad, danny's gaze never wavers from yours. there is the edging feeling, when he listens, that he will be reporting this back to someone, or else recording it in some way for his own later safekeeping. this is common amongst girardeaus, of which he is only the youngest. sharpest, the big man likes to say. and that could be a proud hand on danny's shoulder, depending on how you look at it. proprietary, certainly. the clothing fits now; you can't even see the seams.
MORE.
the girardeau patriarch (eventually he'll get a name) has never acknowledged danny as his biological son, having been thirteen when his mother married his now-step-father. but from the moment danny entered the household he has been treated as nothing but, with the expectations and silent demands to go along with it.
the not-so-quiet rumor is that danny's mother was girardeau's long-time affair partner, having only tied the knot a legally safe distance away from the dissolution of his first marriage.
the crux of danny's legal battle with his step-siblings is the language around girardeau's inheritance clause, which does not technically stipulate that beneficiaries be biological children, or even technically adopted (which danny was not; just legally had his name changed). this is what the other girardeau children are fighting on. all of this could be solved if danny was acknowledged as legitimate with proof, but . . . :3
amidst the stress of litigation and his first wedding anniversary, danny has recently become a dedicated follower of the renovation method, a mindfulness and meditation thought package only coincidentally pioneered & founded by his cousin reach (né girardeau). he's just come back to briar bend after his second retreat, focusing on renovating his sleep cycle, and would love to talk to you about the process :) it's soooo definitely not a cult.
