It's like paradise, spread out with a butter knife :: [OPEN]

[bonhomme7h.livejournal.com]

Who: EVERYONE
What: Réjean has decided that more people ought to celebrate and help raise a bit of dosh for one of his favourite bars. See: flyer.
Where: The Apache.
When: Misdi night and into the wee hours of the morning.
Warnings: Discussion of Pickman's manky feet.

The Apache is much the same as it always is: dimly lit, with the jukebox playing in the background, and the bartender serving whatever's on tap. Tonight, the bar is packed with people from all across the city, different cantons and cohorts, all out to celebrate surviving the fungal plague. Patrons are encouraged to buy tickets for a door prize with the proceeds going to repair the damage tunnelling ants made to the cellar.

Comments

[rhinemaid]

"I will have you- I will have you know that I was supposed to be a lady," Ilde laughs, before her shot, though her family had been best known for their tolerable eccentricities and not their ability to toe the line with everybody else. "Once upon a time."

Fairy, fairytale, it's all good.

[fuckyouboots.livejournal.com]

"And I was supposed to be a princess. Guess what didn't work out for either of us?" Cindy replies with a grin. Hers might be closer to the actual truth than Ilde's defense. "But look at you, half-dressed and drinking. You'll never get married acting like that."

You know all those fucked up old-fashioned rules.

[rhinemaid]

"My aunt used to yank my skirt hem down a bit every time I walked past her," Ilde reminisces, and - solemnly, as if in honour of whoever this woman is, not a blood relative by dint of the fact her father had no sisters - takes the time to hike hers up a little further. Just casually.

[fuckyouboots.livejournal.com]

Cindy sees what you did there, Ilde. And she helps you out by reaching over and hiking that skirt up higher an inch or two.

They are such gentle ladies.

[rhinemaid]

Ilde tugs the ribbon tattooed around her thigh loose and tosses it into the air, amused- but it's just an illusion, and the tattoo is still there when the one in the air flutters into nothing.

[fuckyouboots.livejournal.com]

"Fantastic party trick. Can you make your panties disappear like that too?"

Have some shame, Cindy. Or another screwdriver which she splits between her and Ilde. Never say Cindy was the perfect example of ladylike behavior.

[rhinemaid]

"Who says I'm wearing any?" is the immediate response to that - she is, by the way, a cute little black lace thong that half the bar is probably going to get a look at when she ends up climbing the bar later on. Her received pronunciation and prim delivery makes the whole affair a bit incongruous, but rather than viewing that as a problem, Ilde tends to enjoy it for its own sake. It's great when she cusses, admit it.

"-oooh, thank you."

[fuckyouboots.livejournal.com]

"I see I've rubbed off on you good and well."

Cindy's not wearing any, for the record. Not under that slim and tight catsuit she's rocking. There's nothing more she hates than panty lines.

"So," she begins as the song dies down in between track changes, "is that other leg an illusion too or did an ant get yoou?"

[rhinemaid]

"Oh- that." That, her tone suggests, was not an ant. "I may have failed to mention a small detail about Ivan."

Really.

[fuckyouboots.livejournal.com]

Failed to mention or purposely left out? Whichever one it is, Cindy raises one eyebrow, waiting for Ilde to explain how Ivan and her injury are connected.

[rhinemaid]

"It turns out that fairy blood does interesting things to vampires," she says, quieter, just for Cindy's ears; this is not a change of subject.

[fuckyouboots.livejournal.com]

"And vampire dick does interesting things to fairies?" Cindy doesn't agree with Ilde's choice in men--effectively dropping Ivan's score to a C--but Ilde's a big girl. If she wants to let her man snack on her, so be it.

[rhinemaid]

After thinking about it for a moment, Ilde shrugs, sliding one foot up the back of the other leg. "Well, essentially. And if he breaks any of my rules, Sonja will kill him." And there's your reason why she doesn't look at vampires quite the way they're prone to expecting people to look at them.

[fuckyouboots.livejournal.com]

It wasn't a question Cindy actually wanted answer. Fucking with vampires, literally, is opening yourself to danger, but who is she to talk? She hasn't slept with one yet, but she has slept with questionable men herself.

"Your rules?" Cindy asks as she waves out a complete stranger for one on his cigarettes. She'll need to talk to Sonja later about her little sidekick here just to make sure they're all on the same page.

[rhinemaid]

"'Don't kill me' is rule one." It would be fair to say that Ilde doesn't have the healthiest survival instinct of all Baedal's citizens.

[fuckyouboots.livejournal.com]

"That's everybody's rule. Doesn't make you special, Il." No, Ilde certainly doesn't and that's something Cindy can agree with.

[rhinemaid]

"It is the important one." Generally. Other rules include 'don't touch anything I've recently injured' and 'don't lift me, I'm not kidding', but she's slightly more relaxed on that last one than the first. Presumably. "It's fine. See?" See how fine she is? ...stop drinking, Ilde.

[fuckyouboots.livejournal.com]

Oh, Cindy sees all right. She sees Ilde can't hold her liquor for shit and nothing Cindy says will have her be a little more careful about who she accepts dick from. So be it. Ivan will just have to answer to Sonja or Cindy if he fucks up. Does he knows this is the big question, though.

Cigarette in hand, she lights it and holds it out to Ilde. "At least he can't knock you up."

[rhinemaid]

Accepting the cigarette - she thinks vaguely of taking it easy on her throat, but she's done that a bit and it's boring - the words that come with it strike jaggedly against some internal wound and she thinks sooner or later that has to stop happening. If she can't make it right, at least some day it has to stop doing this to her, clenching a fist inside her and twisting every time someone makes some perfectly innocent remark that she should be prepared for, because it's perfectly fucking normal to say those things and she shouldn't feel like this.

By the time she realizes she hasn't said anything for too long, it seems a bit too late for a smooth save. She leaves it there, smoke hanging in the air.

[fuckyouboots.livejournal.com]

"I fucked up there, didn't I?"

She's not quite sure what she said wrong, in that Cindy meant that vampires can't reproduce the last time she checked, but Ilde's silence is long enough for her to recognize something ain't right. That fist has clenched itself many a time in Cindy's belly and it's enough for her to recognize it when it appears.

"My bad. I'm an asshole sometimes." Somewhat of an understatement.

[rhinemaid]

"It's fine," Ilde says, reflexively, waving it away with the smoke. Then, a moment later, "They, um, they said I was spayed." Sterilized, forcibly. This is one of those things that conversations with Cindy have veered away from, before, the history that Ilde's manner often hints at but that she hasn't had the occasion to mention in so many words before. It's always been the wrong moment. It's probably still the wrong moment; she's just less quiet, after a few drinks, and it is something of an open wound.

[fuckyouboots.livejournal.com]

Cindy wants to ask a million questions and get a million answers in return, but not here. Too many prying eyes and perked up ears. Not only is she concerned for Ilde, but for anything she might decide to slip. Sometimes acting is harder than it has to be.

She stubs her cigarette out on the edge of the bartop and lets the unsmoked part fall to the ground. "Let's go outside."

[rhinemaid]

"All right." The cooler air outside - almost anything is cooler than the heat of an over-crowded room full of alcohol and cigarette smoke - might serve to clear her head just a little bit, just enough, so that's something, too. She rests her hand on the bar as she steps away from it, making sure she's steady before she follows Cindy properly, shimmying the hemline of her skirt back to a slightly more acceptable length as she goes.

It doesn't really occur to her to disagree or, really, to ask why; they're going to talk, sure, and she's comfortable enough with Cindy that she doesn't really mind being steered now and again. Her nature is more deferential than she plays at.

[fuckyouboots.livejournal.com]

One of Cindy's hands lands itself on Ilde's shoulder, an outside force to steady the fae just a little more. And maybe it's to steer her through the throngs of people celebrating survival also. Funny how this world that's so different from Fabletown reminds Cindy of how they party for the Ides of March. It's not actually a party to have fun and let loose, but a party to honor those who didn't make it out of the Homelands on the last boat and those they've lost along the way, and most of all, to honor the fact that the ones celebrating today made it through by the skin of their teeth.

Two different worlds, same need to glorify the luck of survival.

Now that they're outside, the night air breezes across Cindy's face and she gently turns Ilde away from the bar's entrance and down the block into a less populated area.

[rhinemaid]

Ilde still has her cigarette in hand, but by the time they get outside it's not lit any more and she lets herself be led as she fumbles for a match to relight it as they walk. This is oddly familiar - half-stumbling out a party with a girlfriend, the 2AM drunken heart to heart, but normally it would've been a house and not a bar and she'd have been planning how to best disguise her antics the following day.

There's nobody to hide it from, now; she supposes she grew up, somewhere in there, out of sight. Then again- maybe not.

"It's quiet out here," she says, apropos of nothing. She may not be able to hear very well - the sound level was meaningless to her in there, watching people's mouths to understand what they were saying to her - but the music had thudded through her like a heartbeat and the amassed populace had been a dull roar rattling against her ribcage and her jaw. It feels different, without it.