"...good morning," says a servant, a young pretty man in an elaborate floor-length dress.

“Good morning, aristocrat-guy-who-kidnapped-me-and-dressed-me-up-in-these-weird-ass-PJs.”

Vir does not believe that this guy kidnapped him, or dressed him up in these weird-ass PJs. His current hypotheses are “endogenous DMT trip” and “teleported by... dream hag?”

He looks around the room, paying special attention to weapons and exits.

You could probably hit someone in the head with the chamberpot. There's one door; the servant is standing in front of it. 

The servant makes a tight and unhappy face. "My apologies, sir. I... was not aware that someone was coming to stay for the night."

Vir stands up, stretches, briefly imagines knocking this guy out with the chamber pot... but he did just apologize and call him ‘sir,’ so that’s something to work with.

“So you’re the bottom of the totem pole here? Last one to know, first one to get shit for it? I know that beat. Listen, what’s your name, aristocrat guy?”

"Uh, John, sir." The servant does not know how to make sense of this desire.

“Alright John, here’s how we’re gonna help each other out. You’re going to introduce me to whoever’s at the top of the totem pole — master of the house, lady of the manor, Lord Beef Wellington, whatever. And I’m going to make sure they know just how much professional courtesy you showed to me, in spite of being left so woefully underinformed.”

“Sound like a deal?”

"Yes, sir," the servant says. "Once you have dressed, I will take you to Captain Burton right away."

“Perfect.”

Vir rummages around in the obvious spots in the room looking for some clothes. He’s hoping to find an even more elaborate floor length dress than John has, because screw that guy’s monopoly on dresses.

If he has the choice between a dress and a normal shirt and pants, he’ll try to suss out from John whether there’s a reverse class counter-signaling thing going on, where servants walk around wearing ball gowns and Captain Crunch types don’t, just in case.

John, unfortunately, discreetly leaves when Vir begins rummaging around for clothes.

The clothing options are brightly colored floor-length dresses, brightly colored pants and shirts, and dark-colored pants and shirts; there's an option in his size for each.

Vir decides that this is one of those hawk-and-dove things where people in pants walk around trying to find reasons to kick each other’s asses. Which, you know, he would be into, but he’s got this ankle thing from last night, and also he still has no goddamn clue where he is.

He tosses his random excess pajamas in the corner, puts on a bright dress (with bright pants concealed as well as he can underneath for practicality), and silently prays that no pictures of today find their way to his ex.

“Let’s do this John.”

John escorts him to a parlor and brings him a cup of tea. "Captain Burton will be with you shortly."

And a few minutes later Captain Burton appears. 

"...I'm afraid I do not have the pleasure of your acquaintance."

Vir carefully sets down his tea, and checks to see whether he won his private bet that the fine captain would be wearing a pair of dark ass-kicking pants.

The fine captain is in fact wearing a well-tailored pair of white pants, although his tailcoat is as dark as you please. Even his cravat is a sedate white.

Captain Burton is also black and has an Afro; he is more than six feet tall and well-muscled and generally has the aura that while he does not start fights he is more than happy to finish them.

A fitting complement to Vir, who is more often in the position of starting fights and having them finished for him.

“Captain Burton, my name is Vir Vanderbilt,” Vir bullshits, “and I am absolutely the one who should be afraid. I woke up... this morning? ... in your, frankly, estimable estate, battered, as you can see,” he gestures at his black eye, “with no recollection of the attack or the, I infer, subsequent rescue of my person.”

Vir crosses his legs modestly.

“Also let me put this out there: your man John is a saint. Didn’t even watch while I wrestled my way into this dress.”

"My first assumption was that you are a present from Prince Serg of Thule," Captain Burton says, "as I cannot imagine anyone else who would feel inclined to sneak confused submissives into my bedroom."

Vir mentally pats Past Vir on the head for guessing that dresses and pants were a hawk-and-dove thing, but it’s a condescending pat, since Past Vir didn’t really think through the implications.

Vir sips his tea and takes a deep square breath to level off the spike in his heart rate.

“Is that a thing for you guys? Giving each other human beings as presents?”

"Well, I am not particularly interested in people who are not interested in me"-- his tone suggests this is a matter of personal preference-- "so I am inclined to send you home with a ruined reputation and send Serg a rather nasty letter."

Vir claps his hands on his knees and stands up. “Works for me! My reputation as an asshole precedes me most of the time anyway.”

He gets a fake thoughtful look on his face. “One small problem: last I checked, they don’t have any direct flights from Thule to Chicago.”

"...I have no idea what a Chicago is."

“Exactly. And you haven’t heard of Reagan, Iran-Contra, or the Nintendo Entertainment System either, which makes total sense, because none of that shit exists here. The fact is, I’m not from around here either, where ‘here’ may or may or may not be expressly limited to this century, this continent, or this reality.”

Vir takes another deep breath, and smoothes out the wrinkles he’s putting in his dress from pacing around like a madman.

“You’re obviously a smart guy, Captain. I mean look at your fucking cravat, damn. So before you dump me in whatever rat warren they’ve got for poor bastards who swear they’re the Second Coming of Christ... take a day to think about it. I woke up in your place of power, not Prince Surge’s or anybody else. That means right now, you hold all the cards.”

And Vir shuts his stupid mouth, and waits.

"...taking you at your word for a moment, how do you speak Anglian? Another world wouldn't have the same languages we have. --I'm perhaps more inclined to take you at your word than I should be because your body language is all wrong."

“Well A, I don’t: ‘lit’, ‘fleek’, ‘meme-lord.’ And B, if you’ve got any other languages lying around that sound like sprechen zie Deutsch, parlez vous le Francais, or como se dice no puedo hablar Español, then maybe neither of us knows how other worlds work.”

It should go without saying that Vir’s foreign accents are atrocious.

"It sounds like you said 'do you speak Germanian?', "do you speak Gallian?' and 'how do you say 'I can't speak Hispanian'?' with a variety of atrocious accents."

Vir makes a tch noise. “Welp, looks like we’ve got a full Western European cultural crossover going on, with maybe a little more men-in-dresses and a little less grueling-racial-oppression. Which tells me that whatever Casino Boss in the Sky has been rolling the dice of history has been playing with a rigged deck.”

"No, I mean, it sounds like you were saying them in Anglian."

Vir stops short. “So we’re dealing with more of a ‘universal translator’ situation? You don’t need a cravat to see how to exploit that... unless it only works with Anglian? But then how would it know that you’d...”

Vir trails off and stares up and off to the right with a puzzled expression.

"Also I said my last four sentences in Thulic and you didn't notice."

“Ohh, you’re good.”

"So this is an interesting situation. If you're telling me the truth, it's very strange, and if you're lying it's an even more baffling thing to lie about. --I ought to send Eli a letter."

“Well unless and until something even crazier than this happens to me, I’ve got nothing but time.”

"Excuse me." He writes a few sentences on a piece of paper, rings a bell for a servant to collect it, and then returns to Vir. "Your body language is all wrong and you'll never pass as a submissive. You're almost a dominant but it's not quite right either. It's uncanny."

“You know, where I come from people are judged by the content of their character, not forced to conform to rigid, stifling societal —“

He busts up laughing. “Holy shit, can you imagine? Anyway, got any dom tips for me, other than losing the dress?”

"It's hard to describe, I'm not an actor. You want to look-- confident, in control, powerful, someone who could definitely hurt you if they needed to? But subtly, you know, you're not a fifteen-year-old who just presented and wants to show everyone she's the most dominant girl in Londinium. --You keep veering nondynamic. It's very strange."

Vir rolls out his shoulders. He imagines he’s facing down someone he can’t bluster or bullshit. Someone who’s crystal clear on what they want, and won’t stop unless someone is willing to stop them. He imagines he’s in the room with Michael, Archangel of Justice. (Long story.)

“I can pass if I have to.”

“Again, obviously, once I’m out of this dress.”

"It's very interesting. Either you're a nondynamic person who speaks Thulic-- probably a spy-- telling a bizarre lie for no reason I can comprehend, or you are actually from another world."

“Spoilers: it’s the second one. And hey speaking of otherworldliness, I’m guessing there’s like several hundred things I should know about your society-slash-technology-level-slash-magic-system-if-any before running my mouth in front of anyone less level-headed than you.”

“I’m assuming you have shit you’re trying to get done today —can you send me over to, like, a hot scribe in your employ, or a nubile young occultist or something, who can give me Anglians-in-dresses 101?”

"Sir, I think you are unfamiliar with the ways of the gentry. We do not have shit we are trying to get done. We call on each other. We gossip. We read literature that is perhaps improving and perhaps less so. We manage our investments. The entire purpose of the gentry is to be as idle and useless as possible."

“So no chance you’re the captain of an elite military death squad then?”

"I am captain of the ship Hopewell in Her Majesty's Imperial Navy."

(The language is not in fact gendered, but does inform Vir that Her Majesty is a dominant.)