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

[gotbottle]

The door opens, and Rachel sits up, braced to protest the intrusion. God, the last thing she wants right now is to be invaded by a group of revelers and be forced to either join in or flee.

But it's just one man, and he's so polite, bowing and everything. It takes her a moment to place his face, and when she does, she breaks into a bright smile. "Tadhg, right?" She waves him in with her free hand. "Come on in, please, it's all right."

[gifted-hands.livejournal.com]

Oh excellent, he is recognized and welcome. Tadhg's smile broadens to match Rachel's as he steps in and firmly shuts the door before a passing trio of partiers can get ideas. Dropping into a seat with a with a soft hoof of an exhale, he stretches out his long legs and gets comfortable.

"Rather a hothouse atmosphere out there, isn't it?" he laughs. "At least people have been fairly mellow about taking no for an answer. So far."

[gotbottle]

Rachel turns toward him a little more as she settles back into her seat, for ease of conversation. "It's kinda crazy, yeah," she agrees, "but you're right that people have been taking 'no, thanks' pretty well. I just felt like I was saying it a lot. That's the thing about wandering a club alone, I guess--everyone thinks 'gosh, we can't have that' and tries to helpfully pick you up."

She laughs. "I figured it was time for a little breather."

[gifted-hands.livejournal.com]

"So eager with their hospitality." Running a careless hand through his rumpled hair, he rolls his shoulders a little to ease a lingering trace of tension. "At some other time I might take them up on it, but right now ... well, I'm still finding my feet." Not sure whom to trust, in other words.

"But speaking of breathers, have you been able to locate a surfboard yet?" His eyes go bright with interest. Surfing over sex, Tadhg may need his priorities adjusted.

[gotbottle]

Rachel studies him a moment, sipping her wine, and then she nods. "No, I know. I feel the same way." Never mind she's been here half a year, now--it still feels like she needs to find her feet. She trusts everyone and anyone with information, her help, her sympathy, her companionship, but being deeper than friends, that's a different story. She keeps talking herself out of things, second-guessing herself, not willing to leap without knowing.

His question coaxes a half-smile out of her--look, she's down with those priorities, Tadhg. Surfing can be just as exhilarating as sex, when done right. "Not yet. I did some poking around at the big marketplace. Met a guy who knows a guy who knows a guy..." She waves her free hand. "You know how it is. I'm not sure if anything will come of it, but I'm hopeful. In the meantime, a gentleman in the cohort did help me find a good pool. It's at an athletic club. I checked them out, the rates are reasonable."

[gifted-hands.livejournal.com]

"An athletic club?" Tadhg leans his head back against the plush red velvet upholstery to consider this "I should look into that."He normally gets all the exercise he needs at a canter in stallion form, but such a club could be a good place to meet people. And besides, he's not one to turn down a sauna session.

He studies Rachel in turn, both her lovely exterior and the convoluted channels that contain her life energies. Her warm, easygoing surface demeanor is not a lie or deliberately constructed cover, but he can trace coils and constrictions of tension in her patterns, riptide eddies of frustration and sluggish pools of fatigue.

Not unusual, given their shared circumstances. Not at all uncommon in Baedal, he has already discovered.

"I've been digging through past network entries since my arrival," he says softly. He won't speak openly of what he sees, won't probe any deeper with intrusive questions. But a more oblique approach... "I've learned about any number of events that have happened, and still gotten no closer to understanding the underlying why for it all." The network archives rather resemble his pattern-reading, in that respect.

[gotbottle]

"Seems like a nice enough place, from what I've learned. It'll do until the weather warms up and I can swim in the ocean without freezing." She'd promised, after all. No freezing to death.

She takes another sip of her wine, listening to what he says with a frown, and a nod. "No one seems to have gotten close to it," she admits, "despite us all wanting those answers. The only so-called answer we've gotten is that business in the welcoming brochure about our ambitions or whatever."

She sighs. "Different people have been going about different avenues of investigating it." So had she, once upon a time... before she was so tired. "Our cohort doesn't seem to be taking all of this lying down, at least."

[gifted-hands.livejournal.com]

"Ambitions," he muses. "My ambitions and I were doing quite well back home." Though he sounds disgruntled enough, he keeps the bite of real anger out of his voice. Save that for whoever deserves it, once he figures out who they are.

He leans forward toward, hands gripping his knees and eyes intent on Rachel. "I do have some abilities that may be helpful in the hunt." Secrecy may have been the watchword in his world, but in this one he's learning that finding answers will require risk and trust. "If you have any suggestions on where to direct them or who to speak to, I'd be grateful."

[gotbottle]

Rachel shrugs slightly, a what can you do? expression, mostly to cover the fact that she had no particular ambitions back home. Vague ideas of where to go, maybe, restrained by worry or fear of the unknown.

She raises her eyebrows, though, at his revelation. "I guess it would depend on, like, what those abilities are? If you don't mind sharing. If you do I can maybe offer you some general suggestions of people you might be able to help."