wait a minute little back porch lady

[gwynn]

Who: Megan and yooouuuuu
What: Still spiraling into a pit of self-destructiveness, but with less horrible traumatized feels, Megan could use some distractions.
Where: Specifically mentioned are Griss Twist and Howl Barrow, but anywhere is fine.
When: Ruudary 27-29th
Notes: If you need a specific prompt and don't have ideas PUNCH ME OVER PM we can plot things...
Warnings: Drinking, drug use, will add as needed.

Megan's drinking a lot more than she usually does, but from the outside, to people who don't know, it looks like she's just partying harder than normal. Then again, who's to say that's normal -- she hasn't actually been here that long, maybe she was just settling in before now. Who knows. People do notice that she seems a little off-balance, but Megan has always struck most people as being one of those girls -- high drama. When she's up, she's up, and when she's down...

She goes back to work, though, finally, and gets reamed out for not calling out when she was "sick," but she's not fired, it's not that huge a deal -- they found someone to take her slots for her stage shows and her absence on the floor was noted, but her regulars are happy to see her back. It's much easier to plaster her smile on at work, and to be fair, she really does have a good time, usually. She likes her coworkers and she's acquired a number of regulars who are actually really nice to her, even if a few of them are obnoxiously fetishy about her. Well, that can't be avoided. Megan's stage shows -- intricate, flying pole dance, burlesque routines ending in dusting her audience -- are interspersed with periods of her out on the floor, hustling for private dances, just like Camelot back home -- but better, because people here have money. The Vault is not actually a strip club, which works to her advantage because she can make her private shows whatever she wants them to be; there aren't really a lot of rules.

When she's not at work, she's at clubs or bars -- the former more often because she likes to dance, but sometimes she goes to bars to get drunk and flirt with boys in a less noisy atmosphere. She especially likes anywhere that offers karaoke -- she doesn't like to sing but she does like to goad boys into doing so, plying them with beers and vague promises or else facetiously threatening bodily harm, and then laughing as they stumble through the lyrics of unfamiliar songs, embarrassed, but that's the real point of karaoke -- getting drunk and making a fool of yourself. If everyone's laughing at everyone else, she doesn't have to feel like they're laughing at her.

Although she stays close to home -- in Howl Barrow she can be found at local stores, cafes sometimes, always standing out with her wings and hair -- she does venture out to the rest of the city. She does not feel safe here, but she didn't feel safe in New York, either, and it's still true that she doesn't risk being assaulted every time she goes anywhere in Baedal. Just if she gets on the wrong side of the police, which she is, despite her lifestyle, doing her damnedest not to.

She has never felt so alone amongst so many other people.

Comments

[rhinemaid]

A fight broke out a few minutes ago in the club that Ilde is just now stepping out of, into the alley between buildings where it's quieter and cigarette butts on the damp concrete show evidence of others having had this self-same thought. The entrance to the club itself is near enough to the mouth of the alley that she figures she'll notice if Ivan gets thrown out before she goes back in, in the meantime resisting the urge to lean against the wall out of not quite mild concern for what might end up on her blazer.

She keeps one eye on the still-open door back into the club as she lights the cigarette she came out here for, just in case of god only knows what. (She doesn't hear the crash inside so much as she feels it, vibrating, and wonders idly what that was and if Ivan is going to get annoyed with her for slipping out. He'll probably be fine; he looked like he was enjoying himself.)

[gwynn]

Partying hard has its hazards, and one of them is vomit. Not everyone is a badass tank who can do thirty dozen shots and hold it all in while still having the coordination to drive home and then hunt vampires afterwards, and Megan is petite -- she knows her limits and generally stops when she starts feeling nauseated (...generally), but lately she's been pushing through that. Sometimes it's fine.

Tonight it is not fine, so she made a hurried exit from the club (which is fine, there was some weird tension in there, she's pretty sure someone was about to get cut) to find a trash can to vomit in. When Ilde comes out, she's just finishing, hunched over, holding her hair back with one hand like a champ and the other holding onto the sides of the bin to keep her steady. She feels much better afterwards, although she's got a bit of the post-puke shakes.

Super glamorous.

[rhinemaid]

Some people are more immediately recognizable than others; Megan and Ilde have only directly spoken less than a handful of times, but she's a girl who leaves an impression (even when you don't spend half a week terrified she's going to die and it'll be your fault for not knowing how to fix it). It's the wings, particularly, so Ilde's reaction right on the heels of an internal Jesus Christ is, "Megan--?"

[gwynn]

Whoops. It's not that she's hard to recognise, she's pretty distinctive, but she feels the same surprise and guilt when she gets caught doing something unflattering that everyone else does. She straightens up, brushing her hair out of her face, and wipes the back of her mouth with her hand like a real classy lady.

"Hello," she says after a bit, and breezes right past all the awkward there with: "Can I bum one?"

... Yep.

[rhinemaid]

Ilde pauses only briefly, then tilts the pack in her hands (Ivan's, which she'd lifted from his jacket before he got into a fight on the reasoning that she wouldn't want it to get lost during) toward her.

"Probably best to stay out here for a bit," she says, by way of confirmation, tilting her head back towards the open door; she can't hear what's going on behind her, but Megan probably can. Someone is definitely getting cut!

...she's awfully calm about that, but she started it, so.

[gwynn]

"Cheers," she says after taking one. She digs around in the pockets of her jacket -- which is hot pink leather, really, Megan -- for some matches and finds a packet from the Vault. She's got about a million of those all over her flat.

"Yeah," she says, with a glance at the back door, "I heard some shit was going on. God, I like, totally hate it when guys get all caveman." That is a lie, Megan absolutely loves it when guys get 'all caveman,' especially when it's over her, because... problems.

[rhinemaid]

"I don't know," Ilde says, glancing behind her fleetingly, tucking the cigarette pack in the waistband of her pants, "I always thought it had a certain charm."

--but she doesn't like crowds so much, sometimes, and she'd miscalculated how much fun it'd be to watch vs how anxious the enclosed space and angry crowd would end up making her. (She's never been the best at gauging her own limits; sometimes it's worse than others.)

[gwynn]

"One time I saw two guys get in a knife fight over a cocktail waitress," she says, thoughtfully. "Which, like, okay, except she didn't want either of them so it just made them look like big jerks. And also that's like, a little hardcore, you know? They're supposed to just punch each other and then maybe barf on each other a bit."

... thanks, Megan.

[rhinemaid]

"It's more fun to watch if they haven't got weapons." ...based on what, Ilde? (On the other hand, does anyone really want to know what she gets out of watching other people beat each other?) "My boyfriend -- I hate that word - is in the midst of all that," with a vague, smoky gesture back towards the club they spilled out of, "but it was beginning to feel a bit too claustrophobic in there for me."

This is an easier conversation to have than 'so, Hilmi!'; they're not really close enough for that conversation, Ilde figures, and it feels awkward how much she's already been privy to by circumstance. If she were better at this, she'd try to bring that up, somehow, but-- she's not, so they can have a smoke and talk about men punching each other. That works.

[gwynn]

"Yah, that way someone's less likely to die." A pause, then a caveat: "Less likely, that doesn't, you know. Stop 'em. When they're, like, mutants, or whatever. I knew guys who could punch holes in concrete. You don't wanna get in a fistfight with them." She pauses to smoke her cigarette the French way, which is totally unnecessary, she just likes doing it. "Who ticked him off?"

Considering how Megan would rather do anything in the world than talk about Hilmi now or ever again, that suits her.

[rhinemaid]

After a beat, Ilde gives a quick tilt of her head and that slightly self-mocking eyeroll that goes with it, acknowledging her own occasional propensity for stirring just to watch what happens-- "I don't have a stress-ball, and he's not difficult to convince to do something stupid," by way of slightly self-conscious explanation. She isn't quite sheepish about it; it's not as though she thinks it was a bad idea, really, it just didn't work quite as well as she'd hoped.

Anyway, no one's died.

[gwynn]

Exhaling smoke in an enormous cloud, Megan rolls her shoulders in a little shrug and runs her cigaretteless fingers through her hair. "Well, what are boys for if not to do what you tell them to." That's... no, that's not alarming, that's basically how every other woman in Baedal thinks. This is a large part of why Megan likes it so much. (Or liked, until confronted with those reminders about the cracks in the system.)

[rhinemaid]

Ilde is one of those women, or more accurately striving to be while apprenticed to their amazon queen; ain't nobody in Baedal misandrist like Sonja, and she is an excellent influence on a malleable faery who could stand to have a spine. (That there are probably healthier ways of going about this is irrelevant.)

"That's rather what I thought." ...case in point, however incongruously prissily given where they're standing and what they're discussing. "Otherwise, what's the point of them--?"

[gwynn]

"Cheaper than vibrators."

Well, she's got a point.

[rhinemaid]

When she laughs, it's a give-away that her appearance isn't always - that inhuman sound, like water burbling, strange and sometimes off-putting - but there's no self-consciousness about it, not really.

"You can get all sort of attachments for those, here, though-- Ivan doesn't have as many settings." She flicks ash away as she speaks, holding onto one elbow with her free hand and smiling, sharp-toothed. "Still."

[gwynn]

"Well, you could always tie him to a cement mixer." What. No. Stop this. "And this is doing great things for my fake reputation as a black widow, I guess."

Megan is a muffin, the idea of her actually hurting any guys is completely out of the question, although cultivating that air -- even jokingly -- is kind of a useful defense mechanism in Baedal, where dangerous women aren't considered cute.

[rhinemaid]

"I always thought that sounded like a lot of effort to go to for killing somebody," Ilde says, reflectively; she's sweeter than much of the company she tends to keep, but thus far that hasn't stopped her from embracing the notion that she should be allowed to stab anyone who provokes her in the throat. It's a satisfyingly direct solution to many problems - largely why the idea of watching Ivan punch strangers struck her as logical stress relief.

"Although I suppose pretending to be interested in someone for the purposes of eventually murdering them is a bit more satisfying than for the purpose of not being told how much prettier you'd be if you only smiled," after a moment.

[gwynn]

"I guess the idea is that it's supposed to keep people from suspecting you, like. So you make it look like an accident and that takes a lot of time, can't do it too quick or else people get all suspicious. I guess, anyway, despite rumours to the contrary I have never pretended to be nice to anyone just to murder them for their vast fortune!" HOW REASSURING? That last comment gets an emphatic roll of her eyes, not that it's visible in the dim lighting back here -- "How come boys always feel so entitled to tell you what to do with your face? It's like, fuck off, I'll do what I want."

[rhinemaid]

"I think it's that they're arseholes, mostly." It could have something to do with complicated societal gender roles and male entitlement that goes often unquestioned and unexamined by sometimes otherwise unobjectionable men, but no, she's pretty sure it's mainly that men are pricks.

[gwynn]

"Sounds about right." Finally about done with her cigarette, she drops it and stubs it out with her heel. Whatever's going on inside sounds about like it's starting to wind down, too, and she doesn't want to hang around for the sheriff to show up if it got that violent. "So, hey, thanks for the smoke."

[rhinemaid]

Lifting a hand amiably-- "Of course." She should probably figure out whether she intends to go looking for Ivan in there or let him figure out where she got to and find her himself, anyway; a few different thoughts cross her mind, on whether or not she should say anything else to Megan, if there's some magically correct answer to the question 'what is appropriate when you're inadvertently privy to someone's private information', but the only one she's got is the same as it was before (that all sounds insane, be quiet) and she just shrugs, with that small smile, curling her toes in her high heels.