cuddlecity | EVENT: SWIPER, NO SWIPING!

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EVENT: SWIPER, NO SWIPING!

As the blustery winds and steady snows of January give way to the cool breezes of February, the city begins to notice strange trends amongst its volunteer citizenry: an uptick of online searches for things like flower shops and cheap romantic meals, a surprising increase in chocolate purchases (though, perhaps more surprising, no increases in consumption), and a report from the local pharmacies regarding a sudden shortage in contraceptives, of all things! Consider the administration officially flummoxed — that is, until the city's favorite and only volunteer coordinators begin to investigate further.

You see, Valentine's Day isn't quite the thing in Cadelle. Here, St Valentine never led couples in matrimony under Roman rule, and so, no time-honored capitalist dream could be established. However, the date of February the 14th is still a special one in the city — it's the day that many honor as St Trifon's Day, or "Winemaker's Day". It's a day of celebrating the first pour of the prior year's winemaking, with the first bottle of each vintage reserved for drinking with one's special someone... preferably privately, where post-drink merriment may commence uninterrupted. (Scandalous.)

Not wanting to leave out any of their volunteers from the city's special day, the volunteer coordinators have arranged a collection of meeting locations, each perfect for getting to know a potential special somebody in advance of the big day. To help people get acquainted, they've partnered with that reclusive (and anonymous) mogul behind okCuddle to add a limited time special feature for the season — that's right, a matchmaker!

Simply press the bright red button on your app's home screen to be enrolled in a Match Meeting. There are five unique locations, each offering a different experience to appeal to those who might find true love or common ground in its midst, and each location will host a different couple each day to ensure everyone has an opportunity to meet their one-and-only... or maybe just their one-night-only. (We won't judge.)

▸ Any opportunity to incite a little romantic feeling would be remiss if it didn't include the time-honored date experience: a candlelit steakhouse dinner at the city's best dining experience, DeWolfe's. Whether you're hungering for a porterhouse medium rare or a more demure airline chicken breast, the wait staff here will be more than happy to attend to any needs you may have, and delighted to disappear shortly after, providing plenty of privacy for quiet conversation and those ever-important lingering glances. Feel free to extend your night with a walk through DeWolfe's famed gardens out back, or perhaps a nightcap... the only question left, then, is their place or yours?

▸ Let The Good Times Roll offers those who enjoy athleticism and coordination an evening of nostalgic fun under twinkling lights — courtesy, of course, of the disco ball hung prominently in the center of the risk, a perfect match for the classic jams that are piped out from the speakers on each wall. Strap on a pair of rental skates, and when the lights get low, be sure to hold your honey's hand tight for that all-important couple's skate. When you're done zooming around the linoleum, be sure to try a bite of the rink's famous pizza and popsicles meal, the perfect treat for summer campers and kids at heart alike! Groovy!

▸ The Vinery, while not necessarily a classic first-date location, offers a bit of non-traditional romance with its gorgeous hill country views and a seemingly endless assortment of local blends to sample. Visitors paired up for a Match Meeting here will have the opportunity to enjoy a rarely experienced grape-stomping session, during which they'll become bonafide vinters (winemakers, for the uninitiated) and the proud recipients of a complimentary bottle of the Vinery's own St Trifon's Day special blend — the perfect reason to ask for a second date, no? (And if you don't want to wait, there's always the cover of a gazebo or the fields nearby...)

▸ Animal aficionados, fear not: the expansive nature reserve at Nahtazu offers an opportunity to get up-close and personal with your favorite wild beasts — no, not the ones in your pants — and one of the reserve's most knowledgeable guides to show you the way. Of course, since it's an hour away aboard the local trains, the city has arranged a private compartment for two, where Match Meeting attendees will enjoy a catered lunch, the perfect way to fuel for a long day of hiking, climbing, and maybe even a few jungle swings. On the way back, feel free to enjoy the plush seats for a little post-adventure cuddling... or more, we won't tell!

▸ At The Worm Hole, nerds and geeks and casual gamers alike will find plenty to shoot and score on over pints of everything from sweet ciders to dark ales. There's no shortage of games here, so if your idea of a great night out involves beating your date at Super Smush Brothers — and no, that's not a typo — you'll definitely enjoy your time here. To help set the mood, a special booth has been set aside for Match Meetings in the far corner of the room: get cozy, play some Pong, and maybe make things interesting. Strip Marco Kart, anyone?

Of course, those that opted not to sign up for the city's version of eHarmony won't be left out of all the fun! In preparation for the big day, Flora and Cornelius have put together what they're affectionally calling the single mingle: a weeklong invitation to enjoy the best in everything but romantic films and features at the local theatre. Feel free to come alone or bring a pal or two, and enjoy complimentary admission and select snacks each night — just don't let them catch you getting frisky! That's what the drive in is for!

Surprise! It's a Valentine's event that's almost not about Valentine's Day! For those of you that participated in our survey, you should have received a private message from our moderator journal with information regarding your character's match assignment by now. If you did not receive one, please let us know!

Because this event runs a little differently than many of our other events, we've opted to tweak our process a little as well. For your character's date, please locate your appropriate date and location in our BLIND DATE THREAD HERE. If it's still empty, your character has beaten their date to the punch (and maybe the free food, too). If there's already a reply, greet your date! (Pretty simple, right?) For all other threads, including pre/post date experiences, feel free to post traditional open top levels as usual!

For example: Flora may have a blind date with Cornelius on Monday at DeWolfe's, so she'll comment to the Monday thread's DeWolfe comment with her starter. This will make it easy for Cornelius to find her thread and reply. However, Flora may also be lingering outside beforehand looking nervous, or shopping in the mall the day before and looking for help in finding an outfit — these prompts can be posted as traditional open top-levels!

If you have any further questions specific to this event, we encourage you to ask away on our QUESTIONS COMMENT here in this post. If you have general questions, or prefer a more private venue, our GENERAL INBOX (and SCREENED INBOX) is always available for you. In addition, if you've got an idea for a future event, feel free to drop us a line at our EVENTS SUGGESTION POST.

Peace out, cuddle scouts!

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Wow. That's some serious commitment to riling someone up-- or a serious commitment to a lack of tact. Reid's not sure which casts them in a worse light. He actually winces, hearing this. Time to redirect?

"Not the myth I'd have started you with if you were curious. There's a famous one about you showing up uninvited to a night of merrymaking, and when they tell you to leave, you eloquently insult each person present and then leave anyway. A long time still do I think to live, though thou threatenest thus with thy hammer."

Reid, of course, can recite it verbatim. No need for a library.

"Well, in fairness, I have said that to Thor," Loki says with a rather nostalgic little smile. "Though not so eloquently. That myth sounds far closer to something I would do, I'm almost sorry it didn't happen."

Had it happened? Loki can't remember many occasions when he hadn't been invited somewhere and had shown up anyway. Perhaps a few times with the Warriors Three, when they'd wanted Thor all to themselves and he'd gone along simply to spite them and because he'd known Thor would never send him away.

And Thor never had sent him away. Hm.

Okay, good. Reid has never been the team's foremost interviewer, or interrogator, for that matter. He does alright, but it's very much a learned skill for him to be able to direct conversations. Before joining the BAU, he'd haphazardly meandered through conversations with an assortment of facts, light jokes, and complete ignorance to social cues.

He's learned a lot of things with the FBI.

"Maybe not all so bad, then." Reid sets his coffee down to go about resetting the board. "I used to play chess all the time with someone, and then he quit. I couldn't figure out why. So I attempted to play through every possible permutation of moves on a chessboard. Over time, I realized that every game out there, it's just variations on one basic, overall pattern. He'd gotten frustrated with playing over and over, expecting there to be something different. And-- you know-- I get that, but I don't think that's a reason to stop, either."

He's talking about chess, but not only about chess, that's for sure. Reid's memories of Gideon are always complicated.

Loki had refrained from moving any of the pieces remaining on the board in deference to whatever imaginary partner Reid had been playing against, but now he shifts from his drawn-up chair to the chair opposite, the better to play. It's appropriate that he's been given the dark pieces, he thinks with a grim little smile, but it's automatic, the bitter wave rising and ebbing again. He's accustomed to it now, that side of him that always whispers about unfairness and revenge.

The little smile returns when Reid says he'd attempted to solve the puzzle of his friend's departure from the game by playing through every possible game. "When I was much younger, I might have tried that." When he'd been much younger, he'd been the observant, intelligent Loki who never stopped thinking and didn't understand why others didn't look at the world as a great puzzle to be solved in increments. He'd still been fairly young when that Loki had gone silent, driven into hiding.

"The mystery lies in which variation you will discover. The variation is the point."

"Much younger, meaning, possibly my age?" Reid retorts in an amiable joke, proving he does have a sense of humor. The part of Reid that thinks everything is a grand puzzle for him to solve will probably never die; it's too big a part of him. It's what lets him face all the morbid, horrific things he encounters at work without losing his compassion or humanity. It's just part of the puzzle.

As for the dual-layered part of this discussion... "Right, the number of possibilities is exponentially large, enough that most people would term it unique. There's value in each one. Enough that it's worth trying to win, no matter how repetitive." It's where he and Gideon disagree, although some days Spencer is closer to understanding him than others-- the bad days.

Loki casts an amused look across the table, but Reid isn't far off. It's been a very long time since Loki had been Reid's actual age, whatever that age might be, but those particular phases of development last longer in Asgardians. He'd been Reid's age for several decades once, and just as greedy for the mysteries of the universe to open themselves up to him in all their varied glories.

Then he'd grown beyond that, possibly through self-defense, and found the malicious side of mischief. Also through self-defense.

Now he gestures at the board for Reid to take his opening move. "And while repetition can grow tiresome, the repetition exists only because there are rules. I look forward to finding the ways in which our rules differ."

Nice to know he's correctly gauged Loki's sense of humor. He's definitely in a slight feeling-out phase where he's assessing how many of his presumptions from Norse myth could be borne out, given they've preestablished the dubiousness of doing exactly that.

He moves a pawn forward in a standard, unexciting opening move, which tells almost nothing about his overall strategy this early. Reid smiles. "The spirit of discovery rather than competition? I can get behind that." He does like rules, very much so, especially discovering what they are, finding outlines and limits.

It's satisfying for Reid, playing chess with someone he assumes is at least as high level a player as he is, but about whose strategy he can presuppose nothing more than tricky. Loki is, indeed, a tricky chess player, which Reid enjoys immensely, because it truly doesn't matter to him whether he wins or loses. He's done both extensively in the past; chess as metaphor for life, for catching unsubs, for getting to know someone, and just chess itself. It means a lot of things to him. Reid likes all strategy board games, but thanks to Gideon, chess means something to him past the strategy.

The first time he captures a piece, he follows an impulse based on the earlier positive reception to his joking and performs some basic sleight of hand to make it disappear before his hand completely withdraws back to his side of the board. He gives Loki a bland, butter-wouldn't-melt look and sips from his coffee as he discreetly pockets the piece to remove it from having to keep track of it. "Check." It's not a check he expects to turn into a checkmate this soon-- but he is obligated to say it, and the timing is perfect.

Loki is already reaching out to counter that check—there are five ways to do it, three of them with inconvenient counter-moves—but his fingers freeze above the prince (or bishop, on Earth). Where...? He pulls his hand back and directs a suspicious squint across the board at his opposition. He has an instinct for magic now, a sense of when it's being performed, and he'd felt nothing, but the piece had vanished as thoroughly as if Loki had vanished it.

So, either Reid has some flavor of magic unlike anything Loki has encountered, too different for him to detect, which seems unlikely, or he's done something else.

It's a silly instinct, but he can't stop himself from leaning over and checking the floor beneath their table. Just in case.

Then he sits up, fingers laced and chin resting on them, matching Reid's bland look and raising him one pointed interest. "Is it customary on Earth for the enemy's prisoners to simply vanish?"

Reid had intended to keep a straight face, but seeing Loki check under the table makes him break out into a wide smile. It's exactly this sort of reaction that he enjoys provoking from people-- harmless fun with the right audience.

"Nope. But I don't know what's customary for you, so I better not take any chances with rescued pieces." He's not about to offer an explanation unless asked, either. That would make him a very poor magician, otherwise.

That smile earns him a sharp look, it absolutely confirms he's done something strange, but nothing malicious has happened, and in fact it's the sort of mystery Loki used to enjoy.

"I did sometimes venture the idea that daring rescues ought to be allowed," he says as he moves a piece, countering the check and taking one of Reid's white pieces. He holds it up between finger and thumb and watches Reid as it dissolves into nothing in a sheen of green light. Not really nothing, he can recall it at any time, but if Reid is going to somehow make his pieces vanish...

His eyes widen as he watches the casual literal vanishing of a chess piece. He's getting more acclimated to seeing things like this around here, but a large part of him still jumps up in incredulity every time. The novelty's going to take a while to wear off.

"I uh, can't blame you for that," he answers. "Daring rescues are the best part." Seeing as he regularly gets to participate in making them happen, Reid can see the appeal for sure. With interest: "Was that sent elsewhere, actually destroyed, or illusory?"

Yes, you're not supposed to ask how a trick is done, but Reid's thirst for knowledge overcomes that for him every time. It's how he'd ended up doing the tricks.

Loki looks back at his empty fingers, then gestures as if reaching out to pick up the piece floating in front of him, and it reforms in his hand as he does. "Yes," he says unhelpfully, with a sharp smile, and sets the piece delicately to one side of the board.

If the magician were to reveal his secrets, he would not be a magician.

In fact it had been a combination of illusory and sent elsewhere. It isn't his chess set, destroying a piece of it would have been somewhat rude. "I have been a part of one or two daring rescues. Do you run across them often?"

Reid watches it reform with clear interest. He's seen enough actually-magical things by now to have lost most of his wonder, and in its place is his more typical impulse toward scientific observation. Both of the piece reappearing, and of Loki's obvious enjoyment at being able to deny him answers.

Not that he'd expect anything else from a mythological trickster.

"Uh, more often than you might think. I work for the FBI. I don't know if you're familiar with what that is?" He makes it a lilting question to invite an opportunity to explain, if necessary. At the same time, Reid moves another piece on the board.

Occasionally Loki is quite happy to play to type. But showing a genuine interest in his magic is the best way to get on his good side, if only he knew it. The experience has been so rare thus far, it might take him entirely by surprise.

Now he looks up, a little more wary now but still perfectly cordial. "Oh, I'm familiar," he says casually, surveying the board in the wake of Reid's move and the little ripples of positioning and predicting that always follow. "SHIELD has taken up the lion's share of my experiences with your various acronymed agencies, but I know of all of them. What is it you do for them?" And now he moves another piece, a sacrifice piece that might be too obvious a sacrifice.

Once Reid has the slightest indication that he's open to questioning on how his magic works, it'll be a veritable onslaught of inquiries. For now, he falls easily into being the one to explain, barely paying attention to what he says as he follows the game closely. It's an obvious feint, but for what?

"I'm part of the Behavioral Analysis Unit, colloquially known as profilers. We specialize in predictive pattern analysis as well as using behavioral clues to lead investigations in anything local law enforcement feels out of their depth on. Commonly, this includes serial killers, child abductions, anything time-sensitive or particularly gruesome."

Reid makes his move, and sits back again. "I'm not familiar with SHIELD."

There's the smallest exhale, a touch of tension easing out of Loki's shoulders, details a profiler would notice where the average person would not: it's relief. If SHIELD does not exist in Reid's world, neither does Loki's attempt to conquer it.

"You work to catch the truly dangerous by learning the way they think, then," he says, also paying more attention to the game than to the words. His feint had half-worked, but Reid had countered it in a way he hadn't expected. He moves another piece in a different area, to draw attention away from the half-sprung trap for now. "I cannot imagine they enjoy being so analyzed."

Another implicit question unanswered, then. Reid makes a mental note, which is going to turn into an ongoing list, he's sure. The things Loki doesn't answer give him just as much insight as the ones he does, or his chess playing.

"Essentially. Some of them enjoy the attention, but mostly they don't know we're doing it." Reid spends some time observing the board. "The way you commit a crime, kill someone, abduct someone, anything, says a lot. Where you place the body can suggest whether you knew them personally, or meant to kill them, or feel remorse." Reid starts to set up his own trap in response, and shoots him a half-smile. "As profilers, we learn not to profile the people around us unless we want to find out things we aren't meant to know."

In recent years, there was a time when speaking to someone like Reid would have put Loki on edge. It's still somewhat unnerving to know he's stumbled upon someone who can read people so well that he puts those skills to use catching criminals who don't even know they're being watched.

"I should think such a skill would be difficult to ignore," he says as he reaches out for a piece, then reconsiders. There's something suspicious, but he can't quite see it yet. With hesitation, Loki moves a piece, to see if he can draw out whatever trap Reid is constructing. "When off the clock, do you not find it a challenge to stop profiling even those around you who have not committed crimes?" Or those who have, but have since committed at least a few acts to save others.

"Well, I mostly work with other profilers, and they're my closest friends, so that's a double-edged sword," he starts off with, setting his chin in his hand, elbow on the table beside the chess board, completely casual. "Also, effective profiling isn't being judgemental, it's about empathy. For example, I can tell you're actually enjoying talking to me, and the game-- possibly a little surprised by it, or by how much-- and you want it to go smoothly.

"It's not that I don't notice you evading answers, but," Reid shrugs one shoulder, awkward in this position, and idly reaches out to take his turn, still subtle, still apparently innocuous, "but I don't see any red flags, and it's not really my business. So the short answer is: boundaries."

He really has stumbled upon someone who can read him. It reminds him uncomfortably of his encounter with the spider, but they are not enemies here, he reminds himself. He has no enemies here. That is the point of being here. So instead of being pushed off-balance by how easily Reid mentions his non-answers, he listens to what Reid is saying about non-judgment, about empathy, and the truth of his attitude toward this game.

It speaks to Reid's skills that he has identified Loki's quiet hope to begin counting Spencer Reid as a friend. Loki himself had not quite reached that realization. "The story behind them is long," he says quietly as he moves a piece, perhaps not as judiciously as he ought to. "And it is one in which I unquestionably play the villain. Or I had once done."

He becomes more certain of his interpretation at this response, and gives him a quietly understanding look, without presumption.

"I can't know your personal background, but I could guess from being Loki that there would be something colorful." In a supposed non sequitur, he goes on, "Trickster stories are used in almost every culture, commonly to point out social inequality, internal tension, or as an outlet of greater feeling that wouldn't be permitted within society. They're rarely as straightforward as Beowulf and Grendel. Tricksters are a humanizing representation of complex moral concepts, and are rarely kind."

A beat. "You can tell me the story if you want, but you don't need to. Remorse is one of the hardest things to hide. --Check, by the way." Keeping up three different things at once is about as mentally stimulated as Reid's been since arriving here, and having the emotional engagement to motivate him on top of the strategic layers of the chess game makes him give it his full and complete attention. It's satisfying, in an odd way. Empathy doesn't mean forgiveness; it's more complicated than that. Often, as complicated as chess.

Possibly for the first time, Loki is grateful to be put in check, as it gives him a chance to focus on the game as these several revelations simmer in his mind. He'd grown careless over the last few minutes, he can see it as he steps backward through the moves on the board, but can he recover and continue to hold his own? Perhaps, he decides, moving a sacrifice pawn to block the path of check, and if that piece is taken, Reid will lose his queen. It's obvious, Loki doesn't expect him to fall for it, but at least he's conquered this particular obstacle.

And solving that little problem has resettled his mind. "Another time," he says quietly, sitting back again. "I would prefer you hear the whole story, and it begins a very long time ago." There was absolutely a time when Loki would have leapt at the chance to tell someone like Reid of the various injustices served him, but with Jotunheim broken and Asgard destroyed, the stakes are lower. He is beginning to see the value in the whole story.

"But rest assured, there are many colorful stories to be told," he adds with a smile that edges toward wicked. A humanizing representation of complex moral concepts? He could get used to that.

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EVENT: SWIPER, NO SWIPING!

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