003 | OPEN. red lipstick on the end of a cigarette.

[norea]

Who: Hasibe Ozcelik, and OPEN.
What: A show premieres at The Vault.
Where: The Vault.
When: Evening til the wee hours of the morning.
Notes: I will set up sections in the comments for people to hang out.
Warnings: WELL IT'S AN ADULT CLUB, SO.

The show starts at nine o'clock, and the bar is full pretty quickly thereafter, but the variety in the club is pretty striking. Xenians in their best suits, non-Xenians in leather and ripped fishnets, everything in between. There doesn't seem to be a lot of cultural divide here between human and not, even given recent issues. Hasibe makes good on her promise to have members of her cohort given seating preference, as she's sweet-talked the cocktail dress-clad hostesses, and the bartenders (in their vague approximations of suits with very open shirts) are aware that she's invited a lot of heavy drinkers. ...she just assumes people in her cohort want to drink--they've been kidnapped to a strange city with many new things to offer, so why wouldn't they?

Comments

[toooldforlosing]

Raylan has been inside, and will be again; he promised to see Hasibe's show, and he will. It's just a lot more socializing than he's used to, and he needs a moment.

He wishes, idly, that he did smoke. It'd give him something to do besides stand there and look out of place while he's clearing his head.

[rhinemaid]

After coaxing and cajoling Ivan into a priest's collar, Ilde had blithely ignored all of his requests to do with her wardrobe for the evening since most of them involved pleated skirts; the dress she wears instead is black satin, dropped waist, and means when she ends up sitting in his lap for substantial parts of Hasi's performance she's obliged to take pains not to go sliding off. (One handed, because she thinks if she accidentally puts her cigarette out on Ivan's leg he's probably not going to be thrilled no matter what the rest of the evening involves.)

By the time the performances start winding down into music, she's resolved to investigate the rest of the place a bit more thoroughly-- and go catch up with Hasi, too.

[deservesadaisy]

Ivan might not have sought this out on his own, but he was more or less enjoying himself. Having Ilde sit on his lap for a large portion of the evening certainly didn't hurt, and he was interested in seeing what he could observe and overhear in a mixed crowd.

And, of course, Ilde would probably want to introduce him to Hasibe.

"You know, I miss smoking in clubs," he comments to Ilde, "it's refreshing that I can, here. There was such a craze for demonizing cigarettes at home."

[rhinemaid]

"No one really cared any more after the cities fell apart," she says, absently, swinging her heels against his legs. "But then you had to keep track of tobacco, anyway." Not entirely dissimilar to Baedal in that way, she supposes, since that supply isn't the highest priority of the local farming community.

After scrutinizing the rest of the crowd for a moment, she observes, "Well, it's really the least of vices in here, isn't it?"

[deservesadaisy]

"I think it might be, yes." Ivan didn't look forward to running out of tobacco; it wasn't an addiction the way blood was, but he enjoyed smoking.

"The room with a waiver is a nice touch."

[fuckin_thirsty]

Deacon Frost enjoys smoking too.

His kind of vampire don't consume anything but blood; however, smoke curling into lungs only used for the occasion either has true effect or is relatively psychosomatic from being a chimney in his former life. The next time he has to kill someone for their wardrobe, he's hoping they'll have a cigarette case, all classy like.

He roams closer without particular hesitation, a hand going out to drag a chair around to take a place at.

"I had a feeling I'd see some familiar faces."

[rhinemaid]

Ilde has a cigarette holder to go with the general aesthetic she's working this evening, and she uses it to greet Deacon with a lazy, smoky wave-- "Hasi is a friend of mine. I think you met her?"

And there was some name-dropping all around, yes.

[deservesadaisy]

"Good to see you," Ivan says, amused. "Enjoying the show so far?"

[fuckin_thirsty]

And so he sits, a leg slung over the other.

"I figured I'd do her the same courtesy, seeing as she swung by the bar," Deacon confirms, resting an elbow against the back of his seat, not paying too much by the way of heed to the main stage, at least not right now. "With a friend. Though I get the feeling her vampire escort was more for the sake of politeness than necessity."

He doesn't know what she is, yet, but there's time. "What's not to like?" is answer to Ivan.

[rhinemaid]

Though she does know a thing or two about what Hasi is - not everything, but enough - Ilde just shrugs, smiling, shifting a little on Ivan's knee to keep the both of them comfortably in view. She's not going to spend half the conversation peering back over her shoulder and missing half what's said, thank you.

"We can ask Mitchell when he gets here, too," she suggests, dryly, because of course she knows who Hasi went with; she bought him a shirt especially for it. "Or, there's probably a room for self-flagellation, isn't there?"

Young lady.

[deservesadaisy]

Ivan laughs at that. "I've no doubt. So Mitchell made it through his visit without incident? I have to say, I'm almost disappointed." Ivan still thinks that nothing good can come of that sort of repression. And his definition of "nothing good" is substantially more than 20 people on a train.

[fuckin_thirsty]

He grins wide, glad he doesn't have to explain that particular oddness he witnessed squirming beneath the surface - vampires suffering from a conscience... or, whatever it is Mitchell has in place of one... is not a familiar idea. "He's got some hang ups, doesn't he? I kind of like to think he was too," he adds, on the topic of disappointed.

[rhinemaid]

"He's very Catholic about it." Ilde was baptised that way, technically, but it's not exactly something that's been a large part of her life besides as a kind of curiosity- they went to church with Septimus, occasionally, and mostly she'd seen it as an opportunity to peer at people who hated themselves a little bit.

(Ilde has always fancied herself a cynic.)

[deservesadaisy]

"He is," Ivan agrees. "But he hasn't always been that way. He took a human lover a few decades ago, but I think it was really sort of..." He gestures with his cigarette. "I don't know, a sort of adolescent rebellion gone awry. It's just lasted a little longer than most expected."

[fuckin_thirsty]

"Christ, why would you do that to yourself?"

Deacon honestly doesn't know, nor see the point in doing anything with a human that doesn't end in transformation or death. This is written in his expression, the line formed at his brow, and maybe he'd pry more, but he does expect to talk to Mitchell again.

Why gossip when you can go straight to the source? "You don't step into a place like Gutters without a little inclination, anyway, no matter what dress your lady friend's wearing when she goes with you."

[rhinemaid]

"He didn't even bite her a little bit - not Hasi, I haven't asked, I mean the human girl Ivan mentioned." From Ilde's tone, this strikes her as profoundly weird; that whole conversation with Mitchell was profoundly weird for both of them on several different levels, but she just finds the whole thing strange. "Isn't that odd? That's odd."

If someone were to observe that Ilde makes plenty of interesting choices of her own, they wouldn't be wrong.

[norea]

At certain moments, even Hasi needs a break; she is an enormously social creature, but when you feed off other people (however benevolently), you still require the occasional moment to breathe. She is wearing a thick silk robe over her outfit, and though you can smoke inside, she is lighting up outside.

Which is where she sees Raylan.

"So you did come," she comments, smiling at him a little crookedly. "Hi."

[deservesadaisy]

"It strikes me as perverse, but then I suppose I shouldn't be criticizing what gets other men off, hm?" Given their earlier conversation. "But he's more than a little inclination, you may trust me on that."

He doesn't go into details, for now; Mitchell can navigate his own reputation. "I think it's a reaction, in some ways, to the vampire that made him. But you'd have to ask Mitchell himself."

[norea]

Hasibe, creature of sometimes-stealth that she is, manages to sneak up behind him and lean one hand on the table. She's not quite leaning over Kirk's shoulder, but she's close.

"She says the best part is the scars afterward," Hasi says, with a little shrug, "your mileage may vary. Hi."

[toooldforlosing]

"Said I would," he says with a smile. "How's your evening going?" He's big enough to laugh at himself for being out of place, a little.

[norea]

"Come in," she calls; at the moment she's in the process of leaning, in her costume, over her little dressing-room table, balanced precariously on the edge of her heels, whilst she reapplies lipstick.

So that's kind of a welcome for when he gets the door open, as her back is to said door.

[norea]

Hasibe has to conserve how much time she spends in the private rooms--she's got her eye on someone in particular in the crowd tonight, although her motivations have less to do with affection and more to do with the fact that she's working her way into the Candlelighters' peripheral crowd. That said, they're one of her favorite areas, so it was inevitable she'd sneak by.

Which is when she sees Rhade, looking curious as can be.

"Finding anything to your tastes?" It's a light, mischievous inquiry, but probably not the most appropriate greeting. Madam.

[norea]

Speak of the devil, and lo, she will appear.

But maybe that's a bit on-point for Hasibe, who turns up in front of the table Ilde, Ivan, and Deacon are at, still dressed in her costume for the stage, one hand loosely planted on the corresponding hip. She flashes them a bright smile, in good form for the evening. This is sort of her element...at least one of them. Sadly, it's probably one of the least worrying ones.

"You three look like you might be up to something." This is a compliment. FYI.

She did hear her name, and Mitchell's, too, but she's not going to openly ask.

[fuckin_thirsty]

That last point of Ivan's gets a considering look; kind of like parents, what vampire doesn't have some sort of issue with their maker? And Deacon is no exception. But it isn't a point of telling inquiry, and Hasibe rescues the moment anyway.

"Maybe these two were; I just crashed the party. Nice seeing you again."

There's a lot to look at, in any event.

[rhinemaid]

Ilde holds thumb and forefinger up close together - maybe she's a little bit up to something, at all times - and beams at Hasi, which is almost disconcerting for how usually inexpressive she tends to be as a general rule. "I was testing my theory that vampires gossip worse than elderly women," she says, blithely.