007; strip my senses.

[norea]

Who: Hasibe Ozcelik, Irene Adler, and OPEN.
What: Just another night of expensive debauchery.
Where: The Vault.
When: Sukkardi.
Notes: N/A
Warnings: Sexuality, BDSM, swearing, probable allusions to drug use. Sex club, y'all.

Hasi debuts a new costume on Sukkardi: thigh-high stockings, black lace underwear, a corseted wasp-waist, and a sheer black blouse with long sleeves and a high collar. It is so sheer that her torso, aside from her stomach cinched in by the wasp, is visible, including her breasts and the nipple rings she wears. As one might expect, this attracts some attention, accentuated by the fact that in her high heels she is a head above half the crowd. She wears her hair loose, and makes her rounds with charm and a smile; if she is discomfited by recent events in her life, she'll never let it show. This is her job, and her job right now is to make sure everyone else has a good time, that they feel wanted, that they feel that they fit in--and it takes precedence over her worry about reprisals from the Candlelighters.

Plus, she has a wonderful new show lined up, and that gives her something to be pleased about--and good reason to entice everyone she can find to sub-stage B, when her second act of the evening (her first, on the main-stage, with the fire-dancing, is still performed earlier in the night, though this time it also includes aerial silks) occurs. The VIP lounge is especially relevant to her conquest, as she hasn't forgotten her promise to seek out Xenian-friendly high rollers for Xavier.

And now she isn't pretending to be anything other than Xenian.

Comments

[asklepios]

Her laugh is quiet but not precisely subdued -- measured, and it's less like artifice precisely (although she is that, but so good at it now) than it is a kind of benevolent distance. She's so present and still always at a remove.

“I will,” she decides, lifting her drink in a brief salute, assessing him over the glass's rim, still smiling. “But now I am curious. What do you make of the nature of the place? When you're not abandoning young women to it.”

[amourpropre]

No more obscene than the rest of this city, he could say. Or, lucrative. Both of these have their pros and cons and are ultimately discarded, pressing a thin non-smile as Lucius again regards his drink, taking a gentlemanly lean against the bar as he casts a look out to their surroundings. Crows-feet lines at his eyes deepen in analytical squint.

"Stylish," he offers.

[asklepios]

“I'll drink to that.” It struck her as a good occasion for the skirt - flashier than she'd usually be, an impulse buy as a reward after a long day, an indulgence she should probably lay off while she's figuring out how to keep paying Rex Lewis. Indulgence seems like the name of the game in here, though, and she's inclined to be in favour.

Crossing her knees, she inquires, “But you don't partake?”

[amourpropre]

It's a nice skirt, and Lucius isn't one to label anything gaudy for all that, these days, he dresses like a raven that is either having a sleek day or a ruffled day. She crosses her legs and he glances down where it opens, red shoes an elegant reminder for him to look up again and at her question. He can imagine what his answer would have been, a couple of years ago. Certainly not.

But then again, he wouldn't even be giving her the light of day, let alone attempting to earn some of her's. He's not sure he can afford to be insulted.

He isn't, either. "No," he says, simply, a slightly wry upturn at the corner of his mouth, chasing after some fleeting reflection in the bar top as he responds. "Typically. Stylish, but for someone else's sensibilities, I imagine. Yourself?"

[asklepios]

“Maybe,” in a thoughtful way, letting her gaze wander (catch, linger-- move on) what's visible, the sheer variety. “If it is to my sensibility...I'll never know if I do not try, no? Hm?”

A life's philosophy boiled down to its simplest parts. Try it; see. Maybe you'll like it. She shrugs in and out of mortal lives like she's trying on dresses, twisting this way and that in the mirror; is this really me? Is this the one?

Try it; what's the worst that could happen?

She can always buy another skirt.

[amourpropre]

The difference between feeling precious about your own sense of time, versus having so much of it to spend. Almost the difference between Vanessza chasing what's on show with her eyes in distanced regard and Lucius analysing the configuration of ice in his drink and the light bouncing off polished mahogany, and sometimes, Benevenuta's ankles.

That, and he's married.

Cosmically.

"Young women are permitted to enjoy certain liberties," he says, instead, bringing his gin and its shadow helping of tonic to drink from. "I believe that's written down somewhere. Where you came from--" And he almost wants her to say yes, here, having some sort of mutual understanding would be good, although goodness knows why. "Did you have anyone?"

[asklepios]

The gesture is unconscious, her left thumb sliding between her fingers, pressing the space where she doesn't wear a ring (any more-- diamonds from Edvárd, Alec's plain, battered gold band, further back, even, and all of them in a jewelry box in her flat, heart's history condensed into something she can carry); she shrugs, lithe, and shakes her head with one of those small, wry smiles. “No, I have been...'at liberty', for a while.”

Nor is she seeing anyone here, for a 'relationship' value of seeing; booty-calling Tom doesn't count and her admittedly slightly odd friendship with Lucius doesn't, either. She's still getting her bearings here, in some ways, dealing with that which is even more strange and fantastic than she is, and here more than home she does feel as if she needs to understand what she's getting into.

Life was easier when she could divide the world into mortal and immortal; life here is interesting, and she doesn't begrudge it.

“But I'm enjoying my liberty, like you say.”

[amourpropre]

There's a second where he wonders if he is being invasive (because turned back around, if potentially from someone else, he would count it to be), but then she responds, and Lucius knows no true visceral reaction after all. He isn't sure, exactly, what his duties here are as a husband, if it matters, because maybe tomorrow Narcissa will appear in a green tiled room or maybe Lucius will disappear like others have, like Severus did.

Neither of these possibilities feel real, somehow, or even likely. There aren't many examples to follow, as a result. Vanessza does not present one.

But he followed her here anyway, even if all he partakes in is a drink two parts gin. "Clearly," he says, a rather swift quip despite some other part of his mind wheeling away in self-indulgent contemplation, casting another look out from their immediate vicinity; aaand back to his gin-retreat, although even he can see a degree of humour in his own reserve. "I suppose that uncomplicates matters."

[asklepios]

“Some,” she agrees, speaking more broadly than of pleasures offered by the Vault; she fades out like a ghost and begins again, and she's good at it, now, accustomed to it. Some things will always ache, but Baedal does not present the same challenge to her as it does to some. For all of its unique attributes, in some ways-- this is still just one more new lifetime to be lived. She's always wanted to be learning, and in so many ways this place is an irresistible opportunity.

This city, and this place. She doesn't forget about the Militia, the Candlelighters, the prejudices and the politics-- she's just long been temperamentally disinclined to lose sight of the beautiful for the grotesque. She has so much life to live.

“It makes me strange among our cohort, I know, to embrace this. But I think, not bad. I don't do it naively.”

[amourpropre]

"It's certainly in the spirit of the thing." His tone is a little weary, but not wholly cynical; Lucius has had time to find some silverlining. Like no one caring about the things he has done except outside of the ever-expanding wizard enclave he is more or less avoiding. Or no one caring that he isn't affecting the exclusive wealthy socialite from before.

Vanessza is better at being a blank slate. "There are neighbourhoods devoted to those on the opposite end of the spectrum. Unkind ones. You've probably had them as patients, at least, if you've not been to the Spatters yourself.

"It must be difficult, to yearn so for where you came from enough to discard all other comforts. I shouldn't think your position naive." A beat. "Necessarily."

[asklepios]

“Necessarily,” with a wry tilt of her head, acknowledging. Her approach is no more flawless than anyone else's - among her own cohort, she's particularly aware of the risk of her own satisfaction sliding towards something insensitive, and however fascinating she finds this place, there's still the abduction aspect that it's dangerous to forget - but she steps cleverly and carefully for the most part.

She flies below the radar here in ways she hasn't in other places, she finds; everyone, here, is a little odd.

“I suppose that is what's so disquieting to some, about Strangers; most, I think, would prefer not to so easily understand how it happens. And how natural it is, to yearn.” She wonders if some don't push themselves harder and faster into the city for that, if they don't cut their own emotional ties with more brutality than necessary, to better turn their eyes away.

[amourpropre]

"I think understanding the Strangers is one step closer to being one yourself," Lucius adds, tone a little careless. "Upon sympathising with the notion of what one has lost, what little there is to gain." Which means he does, or did, understand it at one stage, for all that the very state of them, their poverty and their mutual rejection and all the shallow appearances of how they live day to day inspires visceral, pitiless distaste in someone like Lucius Malfoy.

He drinks a little more until melting ice collides, submerged. "All a matter of perspective, of course."

[asklepios]

“Yes, it's my thought.” For some people, to understand something is to give it power; so many arguments that exist because of this inability to separate understanding from acceptance. To understand why something happens isn't necessarily to condone or to conform to it--

Benevenuta is a historian, after all. Of course she has opinions on such a closely related subject.

“But,” lighter, “it is a different yearning entirely that brings one here.” Probably.

[amourpropre]

The Strangers would probably balk at that idea. As it stands, it doesn't sit wholly well with Lucius either; in a way that doesn't fit, as opposed to taking offense. In much the same way that the Vault has style that is not, exactly, his style.

"Do you believe so," is prompting rhetoric.