multiversallogs | open; baby's first exploration

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open; baby's first exploration

Who: Rex Lewis & Open
What: Some exploring. Rex is looking around Brock Marsh for a job-- WHO WANTS ~~A WEAPONS DEVELOPER~~ AN ENGINEER-- and then afterwards has found this hip, cool "Vault" place people have told him about.
Where: Brock Marsh (particularly the uni) and Griss Twist (The Vault). You can also accost him in the street. He will love it.
When: Shortly after his arrival.
Notes: Feel free to tag into one of the threads below. The OP is just a little prelude. Multiple threads welcome!
Warnings: The Vault :C

His first night in Baedal, Rex stayed in Mog Hill, exploring the quaint, clean little neighborhood that was his temporary home. It wasn't anywhere he was interested in settling-- to be honest, this entire city wasn't anywhere he was interested in settling. What freedom it offered aside, he didn't want to be here without Ana, without Iago. If he was completely alone, that would be one thing. But the fact that there was a connection of some kind between Baedal and the Barge-- how else could Martha, Snape, Mozenrath, of all people, be here?-- made their absence all the more striking. He put on a brave face for the network, but the truth was: he was terrified and angry, still raw from the events that had come to pass before he was unexpectedly dropped into this world.

The brief exploration did little to calm his nerves. He tried to study his surroundings, pick up what details he could from the locals, but he couldn't stop dwelling on what-- and who-- he'd left behind. Ultimately, his walk around Mog Hill proved to be fruitless; he barely retained any details. It was just one big cobblestone-and-brick blur. Not an aesthetic he had any appreciation for. Give him steel and glass any day.

After a restless night marked by several failed attempts at devising a plan of action and/or escape, Rex finally fell asleep as the sun rose. Which, of course, meant that by the time he woke up, he had already missed a significant portion of the day. Fantastic. His job search was already off to a brilliant start. One quick shower later, and he was running out the door to follow up on some leads. The University would be a start.

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While he draws away, Cindy remains in the same exact position, enjoying popping that stupid little bubble of his. "Nope. I have one waiting for me anyway. I've just come here so he doesn't get to used to me riding him and him alone."

Oh, Jesus Christ and all his disciplines. Why is Cindy allowed out in public? Why is she allowed to speak?

"What are you doing here? Please tell me they carded you at the very least."

Rex cringes a little, because the less he knows about her sex life, the better. But it's too late. Now he knows that she's getting some, regularly, while he can't even have the one person he wants. Swallowing back his bitterness, he murmurs, "Lucky man."

He tugs at the torn label on his beer sullenly and lets out a dry laugh. "No, thankfully. I don't even have an ID." It sort of caught on fire when he did, four years ago. "And I'm here to... check out the..." He looks around, then sighs and shakes his head. "I came here by accident. Happy?"

"I'll make sure to pass on the message." Which would be weird if Cindy actually meant to do it. Telling Arthur his face twin wishes him well in his sex life? Not allowed.

Cindy snickers which she then turns into a full on laugh as the bartender finally shows up with her cranberry and vodka. She tips the glass toward Rex, carefully enough that not a drip slips out. "Why, yes, now I am. By accident? What, didn't it occur to you with all the naked women that this wasn't Chuck E. Cheese?"

Well, this is mortifying. He can work through high-stress, life-or-death situations with ease, but social awkwardness has always been, and will always be, Rex's Achilles heel. He ducks his head a little, rubbing the back of his neck. "Look, I--" He drops his palms flat on the bar and frowns at her. "I didn't know this is a-- sex club." He takes a drink and clears his throat. "I was told. That. This place had... interesting people." Which is true, to be fair. Just not in the way he anticipated.

He lets out a frustrated growl. "Look, I already paid the cover by the time I realized what it was!"

Cindy could be cruel and ask him to speak a little louder, but even she has a soft spot for the socially inept, and really, it does help Rex's case that he looks rather familiar. Not she is not in love with Arthur. Just a little comfortable and maybe attached to the idiot. That is all.

First she grins at him and sips at her drink through the little brown straw the bartender so nicely supplied her with. "Strippers are interesting people once you ignore they're taking off their clothes for money." Granted, she had a short term assignment as one forever ago and knew a couple as friends herself, so it's not like Cindy is just talking out of her ass. She continues to work at her drink before reaching into the v-neck of her lowcut top before taking out a couple of small bills and handing it to Rex.

"Go get a lapdance. Tell them you're a doctor. That'll get some of them rearing to go."

He actually laughs, since she does have a point on that. "Oh, I'm sure they are. No shortage of interesting stories, at least." He assumes, anyway, having never met a stripper (to his knowledge) until coming here.

He lifts his beer up to check his progress, idly considering switching over to something stronger after it was finished. When the bills are thrust at him, he accepts them without thinking, then realizes that they were in her cleavage and also they're for strippers, so... What.

"I, uh, no, that's okay. Thanks. I don't need a lap dance." He offers the bills back. "I never saw the appeal."

Unless there were snakes involved in the act somehow.

"You never saw the appeal because you've never had one." Once again popping that useless personal space bubble of his, Cindy grabs him by the shoulders, turning him around, and make shim face glitter covered redhead in matching red feathers. The woman looks nothing less than surprised, but with the fact that Cindy is waving more money towards her, it doesn't last very long.

"He wants a lapdance. He's also a virgin. Give it to him good." Doesn't Rex regret meeting Cindy now?

"And you ha--" Rex yelps out in protest, but that doesn't stop her from touching him and turning him around to face some strange woman with a lot of glitter and feathers. Attractive, yes, but no, he doesn't want to be enticed right now! He's fairly certain that getting a lapdance right now would fall under the "unfaithful" category. Then again, that didn't stop his fellow soldiers when they were on leave-- not that Rex ever felt the inclination to model his behavior after theirs.

He shakes his head at the dancer, forcing out a laugh. "I'm really not interested, thank you." Then, frowning at Cindy, he hisses out, "And I'm not a virgin!"

Cindy shrugs and turns back to her drink, figuring that there's another reason why he's turning down the dance. "Oh, so you're gay." She says it as easily as she would state that it's raining outside.

If he is, no big deal to her. If he's not, well... whatever. He's either scared of vaginas or gay. There is no middle ground with Cindy.

Somewhat frazzled, he turns back to his own drink and finishes it off to keep from sputtering out a response to the "gay" remark. Sliding the empty bottle away, he mutters, "Not exactly." He drums his fingers on the bar, checking out his options for Drink Number Three. "Not every man needs... that."

And little does he know that he's in a place where you can get any other "that" that comes to mind. In any case, he's going to try to change the subject now. "I still don't know your name. Seems like I should, since you just tried to buy me a lapdance."

"You certainly need to loosen the fuck up." Oddly enough, this uptight nature of Rex's reminds Cindy so much of Arthur. Perhaps the two men are more alike than it seems.

"That you refused," Cindy supplies, finishing off his statement for shits and giggles just after a long gulp. "I'm so disappointed now that I'm not sure you deserve to know it." Another pause. "Cynthia."

"Yeah, well," he taps a finger on the discarded bottle. "That's what I'm trying to do." It was just hard to loosen up when there were half-naked people around. At least, it was hard for Rex to loosen up in these circumstances.

He finally manages to get the bartender's attention, ordering a whiskey and soda because, well, that'll make more of an impact on his sobriety than the beer has been.

"Cynthia," he repeats, looking at her like he's gauging whether she looks like a Cynthia or not. "So either I'm deserving or that's a fake name." Look, Rex is trying to be cool and banter. "Have you... been here very long?"

"You're not doing it very well in my eyes," Cindy muses as she dranks her drink and orders up a beer chaser. "You get an F."

Entirely the latter of those two options. Only a few people know her real name and it's not because they deserved to know it. It's just because Cindy felt that fellow Xenians needed to connect on a more personal level. Nothing more, nothing less. Even Arthur still only knows her as Cynthia.

"Wouldn't you like to know?" She probably looks more like a Cynthia than a Svetlana or whatever Remy thinks her alias should be. "A few months, give or take."

"And I've finally gotten my first F," he remarks, taking a small sip of his drink. He's not quite used to hard liquor yet, having only drank it intermittently, so he doesn't do a good job of hiding a brief wince. As if to prove that he can handle his drink, he takes another, deeper sip and sets the glass down. Plucking the narrow stirrer from his drink, he idly twirls it between his fingers. "A few months... That makes you the most... experienced with this place. Of the few people I've met, anyway."

If Cindy had any say, he'd be sipping on apple juice and graham crackers instead of booze and beer nuts. But it's a good thing Cindy doesn't have any say, though, not like she ever lets that stop her.

"So what's my prize?" she says, batting her eyelashes in a way that's clearly for trolling and not flirting. "A drink on your tab?"

Apple juice and graham crackers actually sounds pretty tasty, but Rex will have to eat those in private, so as to avoid mockery. He does have something of a sugar addiction. But he likes to blame it on all those all-nighters in the lab and not the fact that he looks twelve.

"I have a feeling if I agreed to that, you'd order a bottle of Cristal."

"I can't help it if I have good taste." Not that Cindy considers Cristal the bastion of good taste, but she would order something equally, if not more, expensive. Just because it's not coming out of her pocketbook. No shame whatsoever.

"But it's clear you don't know how to treat a lady," Cindy continues on, waving her straw at him. "The first thing you should have done was buy me a drink. You'll never get laid at this rate."

In general. Cindy likes sex, but sex with two guys who look the same and aren't twins is a bit much even for her.

"I know how to get l--" No, Rex. Don't even try. He's only ever gotten laid in spite of himself, not because of any efforts on his part. He glances down and drinks quickly. "I'm not looking to get laid. Especially not..."

Here. He's going to say 'here,' but he stops himself as he spots a woman out of the corner of his vision. At least, he assumes she's a woman, based on the choice of clothes. She's lacking... mammalian secondary sex characteristics, so he can't say for certain. Hairless, her skin's a bluish-gray, save for a stripe of orange beginning at her throat and progressing down into the plunge of her top. The coloration calls to mind the ringneck snake, so...

Rex is just staring at her the way most men would stare at the stripper Cindy tried to send to him.

And then, after a beat, Rex realizes that he's probably being rude and quickly turns back to Cindy.

"You're right, I don't know what I'm doing. Can I buy you a drink? To make up for..." He waves a hand in a vague direction, as if to somehow communicate "the lapdance."

Yes, this will hide his fixation on non-human women very well.

When he turns back, Cindy greets him with her chin in the palm of her hand as she leans against the bartop with a shit-eating grin on her face. You would think that she just discovered Rex's deepest and darkest secrets without even trying. It's all clear to her now. He's not gay. He's not scared of women. He's just attracted to xenian women.

Cindy finishes her drink and reaches over to grab Rex by the top of his head (She's touching him! Again!), turning his head back to the women he was practically eyefucking. "How about you save your allowance and buy her a drink instead?"

He tries to duck his head out of the way, but he's not exactly successful and finds himself staring at the xenian woman again. She is beautiful, and he kind of wants to touch her skin now that he sees scales, but no, no, no, he can't do this to Iago. It doesn't matter that Iago isn't here, and Rex has been missing the company of the opposite sex for some time. And if he keeps on down this mental path, it's going to be a slippery slope into the xenian woman's bed. Assuming she'd have him.

"I'm in a relationship!" he blurts out, both to the woman-who-was-not-asking and Cindy. Well. How awkward.

And with enough force to give Rec whiplash, she turns his head back to her, blue eyes searching his face for any lies.

"With who?" By a miracle, Cindy doesn't laugh about it. Actually, she's rather serious about it now. She isn't about to encourage Rex to cheat if there isn't an open relationship between him and whoever else. After all, nobody knows about how the hurt party feels better than her.

He expected laughter, so when he finds seriousness in Cindy's voice and expression, it's pretty much the biggest shock of the night. Yes, even bigger than "sex club" and "beautiful reptile women."

"Somebody who isn't here," he answers with a small grimace. Iago's not here, so there's no reason to bring him up, anyway. Besides... how much more explaining would he have to do if he said that? Oh, I was just dating one of Shakespeare's greatest villains while we were trapped on a prison boat together...

One version of Cindy, the version that somebody here is familiar with but she herself isn't, once dated a creation of Shakespeare too, but whether or not Tybalt was a villian is contested in her eyes. Anyway, even if Cindy remembered this, she wouldn't mention it. Sharing heartwarming stories isn't her thing.

"Girl or guy?" Because even if Rex didn't say it outright earlier when she called him gay, he didn't deny it either.

"Um." Rex makes a little face and takes a drink of his whiskey, mumbling around the rim of the glass: "Guy." He opens his mouth, as if he should explain, but then... what's there to explain? She's likely to tease him regardless. Irksome, but ultimately harmless, so he has nothing to fear. So he just leaves it at that. Guy. Done.

Believe it or not, Cindy does have some restraint. Most times she has to dig down deep for it, but this time, it's not much of a struggle to take it out and slap it down on the shiny wood bartop between them.

"Then go home. You don't belong here." As if that was hard to see from jump. Rex doesn't belong here around what could be considered temptation. Cindy thinks he needs to go home and under some blankie with cartoons, safe and sound.

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open; baby's first exploration

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