Laurel Hensley
She's walking down the street because she doesn't have anything better to do because she agreed with someone that she would take at least a day or two off at the end of the month and she couldn't get out of it this time. She looks generally irritable because she's not working.
Lux
It was a dark and stormy night.
Okay, no. It wasn't a stormy night. It was a dark and cloud-troubled night, just such a night as leads to mischief and beasties and people acting out because it's the beginning of the week and (did we mention it was the beginning of the week, yet?) at the beginning of the week there's a certain energy. Projects were due and they weren't worked on over the weekend or they were finished on Friday and they mysteriously disappeared or new projects were piled into baskets and it's enough to make anybody who works at a desk with paper and bosses begin to consider the various ways a paperclip can be used to tattoo corporate-tribal art on the face and which post-it notes will tell those jackasses on the third floor or in the east wing or over in sales that they're no longer welcome. It's a Monday night, this dark and cloud-troubled night, just such a night as leads to mischief and beasties and goblins and ghouls, things that go bump in the night, monsters, assholes, douchenozzles, the unemployed and angry about it, the employed but sociopathic, and the shadows are full.
They don't look all that full. Laurel's walking down the street and it's a dark lonesome street full of dark lonesome cars and some bodegas and that is the street.
Lux is stepping through a door, faded, peeling, painted a blue that wants to be eggshell, and her shoulders are curled, and her [preternatural] grace is careless enough to cut the air and make it cry for beauty, and she has a pool cue in hand the bumper of which bounces on the ground once she finishes slipping outside and she settles it against the inside of her boot, lets it lean against her knee (she's wearing jeans, Lux), pointing up past her ribs, while she herself leans (lists to the side) against an ancient-looking handrail that goes down to the sidewalk. When she first opened the door it unleashed this the dull misfortunate sound onto the relatively city-quiet street-
The sound of a band which has realized that it's a Monday night and nobody's coming to hear them and they're discouraged as fuck and also one of the instruments is out-of-tune and the drummer is too drunk to always hit his set when she tries to do so.
The look on Lux's face isn't irritable, but it is pained.
Laurel Hensley
The blonde woman takes a drag off the cigarette between her lips, attention directed across the road at the moment where a couple of those shadows are. She can usually find trouble in shadows, and trouble in shadows is at least something. She's not someone who actively leaps into the lion's mouth but she doesn't often mind jumping close enough to kick at the teeth if she has a good shot.
She's dressed for comfort as usual. That means a grey tank top underneath her leather jacket, close-fitting jeans and a pair of cowboy boots. (Yes, cowboy boots. Don't you dare mock the boots. It's a bad idea.) If the night has a chill to it--and it does--she doesn't seem to mind overly much. It at least keeps her alert and the cynical bounty hunter is someone who appreciates the value of staying solidly alert at all times.
And that's why she notices the door open, hears the band. Her nose crinkles as she looks that way, but it uncrinkles a bit as she sees Lux. Laurel remembers the woman who helped her out a while back and her head cocks to the side, appraising the other. The cigarette butt is put in her mouth again, breathe is drawn and smoke emerges before she comes on over.
"Are they really as fuckin' terrible as they sound?" She says it like such a thing must be impossible.
Lux
Now, Lux? Lux is trying to be more aware of her surroundings. Is willing herself to be, is pushing herself to be: has found Discipline enough to interpret signs in the world around her, but her skill is yet untested even if it has been unloosed [the rill of light has such shades in it (they sing, the deepnesses where the colors blend mutability)]. Lux is trying to be more alert, but it's a work in progress.
Which is to say: Laurel notices Lux before Lux notices Laurel, though not too long before.
No day-dreaming, here.
The (why not?) young woman closes her eyes and gives a small shake of her head, the dark edge of lashes sweeping across her skin- and that would be answer enough. The way the knife-edge line between her eyebrows sharpens up; the touch of her lashes, as if acknowledging despair, Hell, even the way the mood chases its way down to her mouth and sends one corner hooking up into a smirk like a hook to grab somebody's heart and fling it to the ground and step on it step on it-
But you know. That's just body language; Lux's eyes open immediately, she isn't languishing, and she says damningly: "They are just as terrible as they sound. The only thing that hates them more than an audience is melody- I think they've been looking for it all night to no avail."
"It's not even fun to hate them; they're a waste."
Lux's gaze has sharpened with feeling, but the line between her eyebrows disappears; she flicks a look at the smoking woman, a sidelong-sort-of-thing. "Laurel, wasn't it?" The smirk becomes a half-smile, something luminous: "You're not on the hunt, are you? Looking for a..."
And a brief, snappy description of the lead guitarist follows.
Laurel Hensley
She makes a face like she just had two day-old sour kraut shoved up her nose at the idea that they are possibly, even remotely as terrible as they are. Now granted, Laurel is no appreciator of high art; she can listen to it, but she prefers her music dirty and angry. Like attracts like, after all. But that actually makes her a bit more irritated as she comes to a stop close to Lux and leans past her to look in the door, look over the crowd.
"Jesus, you ain't kidding." She pulls back, shaking her head. "It's like listening to retarded monkeys trying to hump their instruments."
She does grin a little but as Lux suggests that she may be looking for the lead guitarist. "Well, officially no. But I'm pretty sure he's committing some sort of crime against nature right now so I could probably drag him in if you want."
Lux
The luminous edge of a smile becomes instead contained radiance that touches her eyes and brightens up the tarnish [a fall of light in the dark, like a stream of milk], and she gives Laurel a look that is faux-passionate (but only 1/2 faux), and her voice is all laughter-caressed:
"You'd be a hero."
Lux lets the pool stick rest against her other knee, shifting her weight in order to pull a pack of cigarettes out of the pocket of her jacket (it's a plain thing, military-cut, a mid-tone gray- looks like people've been drawing on it because they have), and she offers one to Laurel before taking one for herself.
"Not just to me, but to the muse; to higher powers. Looking for a watering hole? I'll buy you a drink if you keep me company on the way to somewhere else."
Laurel Hensley
She snorts a little, not particularly delicate but fairly amused, as Lux expresses the sentiment: You'd be a hero. It's a cynical sound to match a cynical woman but she's not offended; it's the kind of cynicism where you simply disbelieve. Laurel rages at a lot of things, don't get us wrong, but she has no reason to rage at this woman yet, especially when they're exchanging jokes.
"That'd be about the first time anyone used that phrase in my vicinity. Usually it's 'uppity bitch,' 'that hardass cunt that chased me down' or 'oh no, oh please, oh stop.'" She seems perfectly comfortable with all of them.
Lux offers a cigarette and she shrugs, takes it. "Thanks. Yeah, sure...you buy the drink, I'll do the time." It's said with a little chuckle as she lights up. "You know of a place?"
Lux
Lux hasn't misplaced her lighter (probably not the one she got from Laurel when they first met [that one's already been traded, moving along the invisible lines of barter-system which bind smokers together and keep them apart]), but Laurel's already got one out, so when the flame flicks Lux gestures with her own cigarette, either puts it to the flame or takes the lighter and lights up, then exhales away from Laurel-
Then she drifts away from the railing, pool cue kept a-twirl in her other hand either because she's forgotten it or she's not going back inside to give it back, and indicates a that-a-way direction with a spare incline of her head.
"Sure," she knows a place. Then, bright-eyed curiousity, "Tch. I've never met a bitch who wasn't also 'uppity'; I wonder that they don't spare their breath. Do all your jobs talk about you like that when they know you're there?"
There is a lack of oh-poor-you, those awful meanies, in her tone. Laurel seems to enjoy being herself, or to at least inhabit it wholly.
Laurel Hensley
She holds out the lighter when Lux gestures, letting her put end to flame before she lets it die and slips it into her pocket. This one isn't one of those random Bics; it's an old battered but sturdy Zippo and she snaps it shut with a flick of her wrist before pocketing it. Laurel looks the way that Lux is pointing, squinting a little as she considers as if remembering the lay of the land that way. But there are a lot of bars and she hasn't been in them all so she just shrugs and starts walking.
At Lux's question, the blonde grins a little bit. "Well, uppity is just one of the adjectives that they like to apply. The most common one, to be sure." She exhales a drag, looking around as they walk. It's not paranoid; it's just a general sense of alertness, ingrained to the point that it's casual and she barely even recognizes doing so.
"To be honest, the jobs are usually the second or third of those. Number one is my fellow bounty hunters." She throws a smirk the other's way. "You may be shocked to hear this, but asshole macho shitheads aren't too fond of the idea of competing fairly with someone who doesn't have a dick."
Lux
They walk. The night is still dark and cloudy and full of shadows, and the shadows are still full of things. Lux lets her senses expand [practice, pactice], drinking up the crescent edge of moonlight filtering across the lace-intricate edge of a cloud- head tilted-back in order to regard the ceiling of Heaven [doesn't that imply earth is Heaven? (Oh no, no, this is Hell, this is where stars fall to burn out and smoulder- see?)], another plume of cigarette smoke dispells that vision, and in that-alley-that-a-way somebody is repeatedly tapping the edge of a bottle against concrete and over that-a-way somebody is whispering, and Lux seems more alert than she usually does too. More alert, until she [practice, practice] lets the sensation of signs and omens and this view of the world that allows for seeing and hearing more of it to diminish again [satisfied, more or less, that there's nothing too dangerous-],
A chuckle. "I suppose it's tough to figure out what to do when you bring a dick to a dick-fight and the other person's got different weaponry," let the thread of that dissolve to become: "How do you compete 'unfairly' in the world of bounty-hunting? If it just involves calling your colleagues names, sounds like the fairest unfair fight in town."
Laurel Hensley
"Oh, there are ways." She snorts a little bit. It's a man's world, they say, and when it comes to bounty hunting--like most male-dominated professions--it's doubly so. Sure, other professions might have the illusion of equality (and barely that) but when testosterone dominates your industry it's a boy's club. "I wish it were as easy as just calling names."
She grins about, though its a thoroughly sardonic grin. Equal parts mirth and derision. "Bail enforcement is a contract market. No one works on regular salary; it's all commision. You pick up a contract, you take someone in. So if you want to drive someone out, you sabotage them. Find out their mark, give the mark warning of who's coming for them." She speaks as someone who knows it from experience. A hand comes up to brush hair out of her face in the face of a gust of wind.
"And when you're someone no one wants in the business, you team up to make it even more effective. If you're a royal cock--like most of them are--maybe you arrange a little beatdown in an alleyway. I've suffered more than a few cracked ribs at my co-workers' hands."
She looks at Lux and grins, not altogether pleasantly. "But I usually give as well as I get."
A pause then, and she looks over at Lux curiously for a moment, giving her a quick assessment. "So what do you do?"
Lux
As the thirty-something (?) woman explains how it works for a woman in Laurel's line of work, Lux looks Laurel over. Not lost in reverie, because she knows exactly where in reverie she is, but: reverie, now. "Assholes. But Dorothy Parker says living well is the best revenge. I know other people've said it too, but I like her best personally." This is: insouciant, careless, without being callous or inattentive to the woman she's speaking to- "Is that how you deal; live well? Or do you- you know, I don't even know what tools of the trade you might sabotage."
Laurel gives Lux an assessing glance. The rebel-girl is: a fine-thing, a glass-fine thing, lovely and compelling and though she might compell some people to do bad things, it's very difficult to imagine her doing Laurel's job, getting cracked-rib beat-up in an alley. She looks determined; she's got personality, a draw-you-in-edge, but it's not necessarily noticeable. What the hell does she look like she does?
"I'm an artist," she says, with a twitch of her lips: "So I starve, generally; grasp straws, dig through the muck. You know."
The muck is said: with relish. She rubs her cigarette, what's left of it, out on the side of a building which turns out to be a bar called Dixon's with a slightly-gone-to-seed bouncer sitting on a stool outfront, talking to a man with tattooed sleeves who's resisting the new-autumnal chill to the night, does an after-you gesture.
Laurel Hensley
Lux suggests an aphorism born out of wisdom and in response the blonde woman in her leather jacket gives a chuckle, looking over at this fine thing that doesn't seem like she would do well in the midst of a group beatdown. Laurel isn't one to give into sayings; the hardened look in her face and the attitude she gives suggests that those proverbs she subscribes to are of a very different and far more cynical variety.
"I like to think leaving assholes on the ground with their teeth in the puddle in front of them is the best revenge usually, but living well isn't bad." She gives a light shrug, glacing ahead to where they're walking. The bar looks like one of several she's been in before; Laurel's line of work (and perhaps her after-work habits) make her a connoisseur of dive bars, if such a thing exists. This one is new to her though.
"An artist?" She glances at Lux again, brow arching at the way the vampire says muck like it's something to be enjoyed. There is a level of understanding there; the muck is where Laurel lives, spends her days and nights earning money and congregating with the scum of society. Is it any wonder why her beliefs about mankind's inherent shittiness are so reinforced? But there are good things to the muck too, and Lux seems to know that.
"Well, more power to you," she says with a shrug. She accedes to the after you and slips inside past the bouncer and his inked-up conversation partner to head inside. "So like, what? Paint, sculpt, arrange people in some human chess exhibit as political statement?"
Lux
The bar is not spacious. There is a door on the other side of the bar, a flat, wooden affair, which looks old and scarred up, like sharks chewed on it once when their little shark-teeth were just coming in, some ambient lighting, sawdust to soak up puke and blood and piss, but a neat metal sculpture that's all twisting branches or tentacles or vines metal and dark with it and glinting in the ambient light with even more dark on the one brick wall, behind which is a door that never opens, something hammered into the wall. There is space for live music, but there is absolutely no chance of live music tonight, and a short hall that reveals stairs going up (but the light's off) and a very suspect looking bathroom door, Ladies & Gentlemen.
The best that can be said of the place besides it's got a cool metal sculpture is it's got a nice buzz going on and that other band isn't here, with a crowd that's rough shot-through with young anarchists, or something. Animated conversation over there, dull-eyed man whose soul has been killed over there just staring at his drink, woman who should probably be careful about her drink talking to some smirky looking guy over there, genial woman holding court over there by the jukebox.
Arrange people in some human chess exhibit as a political statement - makes her exhale, laughing. The laughing is more a sense of animation, a surfacing gleam in the eyes, than it is a sound; her shoulders move with it:
"What political statement do you think that would make?" It's not a rhetorical question- it's a bar-question. "I- well, principally illustration- especially watercolor- or animation, but anything that involves paint. If I can afford to use some of the old techniques, all the better- sadly, my alchemy is rusty, and the last time I tried to make verdigris with copper and vinegar it turned nto straight-up poison, and the egg yolks went bad."
"Speaking of poison, pick yours- what're you drinking?"
Laurel Hensley
Lux is amused by her quip about performance art, and her laugh brings an upward tug to the right corner of Laurel's lips as well. "Oh hell, I don't know," she answers her bar-question, eyes quickly scanning the place and taking in everyone--the dull-eyed alcoholic, the roofie-in-progress (she pauses a bit on the guy, she may end up having to chase him down one day), the charmer by the jukebox. "Generally it all boils down to the same thing, right? That people are shitty."
Not many aphorisms, our Laurel, but that one does stick in her brain. She knows it well, breaths and lives it perhaps more than she realizes. She doesn't say it with any sense of grandeur, no dramatic pause or change in tone to indicate she's quoting or speaking wisdom. It's not a truism to her; it's a simple fact.
She glances at Lux as she talks about trying to mix up her own paints, and she glazes over just a bit. It's that look when someone might as well have just changed languages as far as the listener is concerned, and she grins when it's done. "I don't know what you just said, but it sounds pretty fucking bad.
"And it'll a double screwdriver for me," she says with a shrug. "I'm a simple girl; I like 'em strong and elegant in simplicity."
Lux
This kiss-of-a-grin: "It was awful. Finding a drowned rat stopping up the toilet after waking up hung-over would've been a pleasant and delightful surprise comparatively."
Lux isn't a regular, but she is lovely [and magnetic (c'mon, darling, just give in to gravity- see the fine-thread way attentions shift?)], and it doesn't take her long to get the bartender's attention. The bartender: was busy texting, talking to a bear-bearded biker, jowels thick and eloquent, who looks like he might've sprung up from his bar-stool the way a mushroom springs up out've-shit, and the biker watches Laurel and Lux, watches Lux, says something before more than a couple seconds've gone by, and the 'tender turns and heads over to do his job. Lux orders a double screwdriver for Laurel. For herself, a Blood and Sand: she likes the scent of it. And she's curious to know what heightened senses'll make of that. She is about to regret heightening her senses in a place with such a questionable bathroom, but that's in the future- live in the present!
Laurel says people are shitty like it's a truth, same as down is down, up is up. Lux didn't give Laurel a look at that, nor did she reply immediately with some Romantic's alternate view of people, but that isn't to say she isn't considering it and what else she knows about Laurel. People as chess pieces. Art.
Sure.
"So if people are shitty, what does that mean for you and I? What's to be done?"
Laurel Hensley
She blinks at the rather evocative image of the rat in the toilet and laughs. "Wow...well, you have a gift for imagery, I'll give you that. Though I guess that would make sense as an artist."
Lux is lovely to be sure, and Laurel isn't half-bad herself. A couple of attractive women coming up to the bar is easy attention-grabbing material for a bartender, and not just because most bartenders are male; attractive women in a bar are usually good for business too, and keeping them inside is always a smart move. Laurel gets her strong drink and Lux gets her flavored scotch drink. Laurel's no alcoholic, even if she does drink freely and smoke and engage in other health-risking habits, but she knows her drinks and she is well aware of what a Blood and Sand is.
Lux asks what's to be done about it and Laurel picks up her drink, snorts. "Not a hell of a lot. Seriously, when the rest of the world is completely fucked upside the head, what can you do? Government doesn't give a shit, religion is the dumbest lie ever told that anyone believed. No organization is out there to help anyone, or at least none that can actually do anything other than pick up the pieces."
She raises the rim of the glass to her lips, takes a strong swallow. The burn down her throat feels good. The glass is set back down and she turns, leaning back against the bar so she can watch both Lux and the crowd. "It's up to people to do what they can. I throw as many assholes as I can back behind bars. It doesn't help much, but it at least quarantines a few and I get to deliver a little justice of my own if they try to resist."
Lux
[For fun!]
Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 8, 9) ( success x 2 )
Lux
"Thanks," she says, echoes of Laurel's laughter in her own voice; look at Lux, she is a mirror.
Drinks. Bottoms up, the bartender says, like he's writing a crude line on a post-card of 1950s era-bathing beauties, something faded and Californian. He probably does not intend it and, getting no response, he drifts back to his friend with the beard and the cop-glasses inside. The kind that reflect the world antique and amber. Lux curls the fingers of her left hand around her glass and inhales the alcohol-drenched air -- inhales the kiss of orange zest, the resonant woodsy sweetness, and - sensualist given a new sense - then it goes wrong. Because she also inhales: the fetid odor of wet-dog, the acrid many-days-long sweat sticking to cotton that's having a reaction, the hoppy gold of beer and the cough syrup astringence of something else, blowsy perfume, the notes of which she might be able to pick-apart and name if there wasn't so much else, body odor and oh old vomit nobody's found and something sick and -
Lux is in control of herself. She does not lose herself or get confused or even make much of a face. A momentary shadow, that's all. The inhale becomes longer than it would've been otherwise: a calming, determined breathing, and then an exhale. Her shoulders set and she runs her finger along the edge of the glass, watching the play of light on a smear of liquid on the bar's counter-top, and
There is a definite sense of agreement when Laurel says no organization is out there to help anyone; it's there in the quirk of her bright, passionate mouth, in the way she lets her body relax against the bar, heck, the way she lifts her chin. People speak with their bodies, and so do vampires. A vampires body just betrays them less. Their hearts stay silent.
" - is that why you fell into bounty hunting? Because you wanted to get a chance to deliver a little justice? If everybody's an asshole, doesn't that make prisons beside the point -- Hell is the world. And your neighbors. And your family. And your friends. Etcetera. What's worse than that?"
Laurel Hensley
The bartender can Bottoms Up it all he likes; Laurel drinks at her own pace and while she's not one who nurses drinks for long periods of time, she actually does enjoy the taste, the warming that alcohol brings as she downs it. So there is no bottoms up-ing; she took her first drink and that left a solid amount left.
Lux's reaction speaks in agreement to Laurel's cynicism, and Laurel sees what she expects. In truth, it isn't quite what she expects though; there's always some idiot who has to speak up and say Oh Laurel, people aren't that bad or Why do you have to have such a dim view of everything? Laurel hates people like that. They can delude themselves with optimism all they want; Laurel knows the truth of life. Or at least she thinks that she does.
She shrugs a little--an agreement as anything else she could have done--when Lux asks if that's why she got into her work. "It's not quite why, but it's close enough. It gave me the shove to do it. And yeah, you're right...prisons probably are pointless. But you know what? There was a point where I was sitting at home once and I decided that I could do one of two things. I could either stay at home and never ever leave the house, just pretend that nothing outside the walls existed and choke myself with the bullshit on TV or whatever else, or I could go out and do what felt right. Do I make a difference?"
She snorts at that, shaking her head as she picks up the glass again. "Of course not. But is making a difference really the point?"
Lux
After she has separated the different sensations, one from the other, after she feels ready, Lux sweeps the bar with a narrow, attentive glance, still boneless against the bartop, chin still lifted in agreement [passion is unquenchable, and it informs and delineates much of - most of - Lux's decision; even her calculations are inspired more by desire than anything else- sometimes those desires are just far-reaching, are star-cold, Hell-frost edged], an ear on Laurel.
Is she in full agreement with Laurel's point of view?
Probably not.
Laurel says she decided to go out and do what felt right, and the corner of Lux's mouth snicks up, "And yet you say nobody's called you a hero before," the artist says, "Surely you deserve that badge; at least 'antihero.'" The gloom-haired young (pretend) woman doesn't sound sarcastic or thoughtful or flippant. "Truly, I would never say making a difference is the point. It can be a point -- something to strive toward. But people say 'make a difference' like it's a similar thing to breathing in and turning oxygen to carbon dioxide, as if that process is somehow terribly necessary to the great wide world instead of just to the individual."
Laurel Hensley
Of all the people to not call her a hero, Laurel would probably be the first. The woman has no illusions about the world...well, other than the ones that are truly universal to humanity, and perhaps those that lend themselves to cyncicsm; she similarly carries few illusions about herself. Others might call her the kinds of things she mentioned earlier; uppity bitch was the most pleasant. And the bounty hunter would largely agree. She's not pleasant and generally not friendly; even her camaraderie right now with Lux, such as it is, is done under the careful eye of What's in it for this woman? Because no one just buys someone a drink to talk; not in Laurel's estimation, anyway. Maybe Lux is trying to pick her up; maybe she needs someone's ass kicked. There are many possible reasons and none of them are particularly good.
And so she grins when Lux says she's a hero, or at least an antihero. She shakes her head, sardonism holding sway again with a shrug. "I really don't care what people call me. I kind of prefer Laurel myself, or alternately 'That badass over there.'" The grin evens into a smirk and she finishes off her drink.
"You're right on the make a difference crap though. The world doesn't care whether we make a difference or have absolutely no impact in our lives. It's gonna keep spinning regardless of whatever bullshit goes on on it."
Lux
Laurel prefers Laurel, or 'that badass over there,' and this causes the snicked-up corner of her mouth to sharpen, become the suggestion of a smirk.
Then!
"Oh, yes. It's a relaxing thought, isn't it? Though I confess I wouldn't go that far. The world might not -- as a whole -- find one individual's ability to make a difference to be particularly meaningful, or even noticeable, but to that individual: it is everything. You know -- without oxygen, we perish. The world does stop spinning."
Her smile is not repentent (insolence is easier for Lux than repentance ever was), is in fact a thing that touches the twilit-clarity of her tarnished gaze with shade at the same time the edge of her mouth touches on luminous again. A brighter word than bright. Did the poet ever find it? Naw. Seems like it's an impulsive thing, though, instead of deliberate.
Her attention sharpens, suddenly, spine-straightening, on the smirky looking guy with the woman who should probably be careful about her drink, and with her attention still sharp, she says,
"Have you ever been arrested after making someone pay you with teeth?"
Laurel Hensley
Lux espouses on how soothing it is that the world is ignorant of the chaos that unfolds on its surface and Laurel listens. It's philosophy to a degree and Laurel finds philosophy a little boring, but still she listens because occasionally there's something interesting in there to pick out. While Lux's observations are astute and poignant, they don't really stand out to the bounty hunter.
Her attention shifts, following Lux's gaze to the sketchy dude who may be a date-rapist in the making (or, perhaps, a date-rapist already made that is striking again). She snorts a little bit, eyes narrowed, before looking back at the other's question. That draws a short nod.
"Yeah, couple of times. People have pressed charges on me, but nothing's ever stuck because...well, I'm allowed to use a certain amount of force, and cops usually give me a little more leeway than they give the guy who skipped bail on charges of beating the shit out of his wife, you know?" She grins a bit. "And anything I've ever gotten in out of work situations...well, they usually know better than to press charges. One guy did once after I smashed a couple of glasss over his head for shoving his hand down my pants in a bar. Got off due to self-defense rationale."
Lux
[Hmm. For fun, glare-of-death-at-dude?]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (4, 5, 5, 7, 7, 7) ( success x 3 )
Lux
Her lip curls contemptuous of the man whose head Laurel smashed a glass over. The contempt's a venom-light stinging thing, and has nothing to do with the promise of bee-sting [Basilisk] violence [stillness] that surfaces in her gaze when the smirky man with the inattentive woman casts a too-too casual glance around the bar and snags his gaze on the pair of attractive women at the other end. No. Lux may be an ornamental thing -- strictly decorative, darling: but she has a way of looking, something the opposite of expressionless. The look is the insinuation of a promise: of what? Cops, maybe. I've seen you. But that contemptuous lip-curl serves the look well, too.
"Tell me he was drunk." And then, "Do you have a specialty?"
Laurel Hensley
She laughs at that, thoroughly amused by the question. "Would you believe he wasn't? Asshole just tried to hit on me, I told him to fuck off and he said I must not actually be a chick. Went to get his proof."
She raises her eyebrows and shrugs casually, chuckling. "Well, he got his proof. About 120 proof to the back of the head after the glass shattered."
Lux asks if she has a specialty, and Laurel is thrown off by that, not knowing what she means at first. "A specialty...oh." She blinks. "You mean a favored mark to chase down?" She takes a breath, thinks about it a moment. "Not really. Serious crimes, not stupid petty shit or white collar crap. Everyone else is happy with those because they pay well, but they're a pain in the ass and I'd rather be on the street hunting down the violent bastards."
Lux
[Whatever, girl.]
Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (2, 5, 7) ( success x 1 )
Lux
Now, the smirky man just has that kind of face. He can't not be smirky. He's always, always smirky, but the cocky in the smirky deflates away. He pretends to get a text; his palms sweat; he constructs reasons, reads into the Look, and excuses himself. The woman deflates too, disappointed. He seemed so nice. Maybe he was (but this is the world of darkness [everything is besmirched]).
Lux tilts her head back at Laurel, resting her elbow precisely on the bartop, then - also precise - her neat little chin on her knuckles, making a neat little impression when she nods into those knuckles (glint of a ring, one of her only ornaments tonight, a white-gleaming metal band).
"What I actually meant was specialty in terms of how you go about your work. Are you the lady who wades in, ready to bare knuckle brawl? Are you best at surprising them at their place of work? At tracking them down via their contacts, or following a paper trail? One of those guns that shoots rubber pellets or a taser? In before they notice, or threaten them until they come quietly? But," she grins, "your answer was interesting, too. So you aren't in it for the money."
Laurel Hensley
"Oh, that." She laughs then, not looking embarassed in the slightest for her mistaken assumption. Laurel has cheeks that rarely see a flush of blood unless it's on the outside of the skin, either her own or someone else's. The polite term would be 'unflappable.' The more appropriate term would be 'shameless.'
"No, I follow it through whatever trail I have to." She glances back at Smirky, watching him walk away with a brief, narrowed gaze before she looks back. "I know some people who only go one way or the other...but when you're hunting someone you have to use everything at your disposal. You have to judge the situation, be adaptable."
She gives a little grin then. "Believe it or not, I actually have people skills when I need to."
Lux
The jukebox changes songs and there is a lull in the dull murmur from the rest of the bar just as the music changes. The soft husk-catch between records [discs] crackles like it's done this too, too often before, like it's wearily following the same groove again, and the catch of it, as if the jukebox - or the sound-system, at least - were hiccuping on a sob, catches Lux's attention. Discipline, Lux: be disciplined. The ripple of a flaw in the chewed-up wood, the bump of it, pressing up through the heavy fabric of her jacket; even the fabric of her jacket; it's such a contrast to the cool smoothness of the glass, orange peel dissolving, little white-zest sun-rays drifting away, fine things, fine, fine, the glint of flax in Laurel's hair, the gleam of wheat and the contrast of it against her shoulder, the drum-pulse - well. The dart of a glance from that smirky smirk guy back at the woman who hasn't had a drink of her whatever yet; the way his gaze lingers, hangs on it the way Lux's ear hangs on the change-of-songs for a moment. Hell: the sound of Laurel, laughing and unflushed, talking about hunting someone. Lux finds smirky smirk at those words again; trails his gaze and him, her lashes sweeping (even this - it's a pleasure) against her cheekbones once.
"So... Your specialty is adaptability. You sound like somebody I'd pick for a sports team if we played the same sport." Here, that hint of laughter again - contained; more a visible thing than something-you-hear: "Oh, I believe it. Am I not people?"
Amber
A lull in the music is the perfect moment for a certain tempestuous young woman to enter a dive bar. One might think that with all the things that happen to Amber in bars or because of bars she would stop going into them. The harassment, the trouble, the fights. And yet there she is, walking showing her ID to the bouncer with the scowl that is her semi-permanent expression when she's out and about. And then she's walking past him, into the bar proper as the music starts up again. She is dressed in jeans and boots and a fitted sleeveless black shirt beneath a sleeveless dark green hooded shirt. In her brown hair are streaks of red, and her eyes burn like green fire.
A fire that doesn't abate when she happens to spot two familiar figures over by the bar. Together. Talking and whatever. Tilting her head, hands shoving into the pockets of her jeans, Amber starts closing on Lux and Laurel, her mouth quirking into a grin that cuts like a knife.
She greets the pair with an upward nod for two. "I didn't know you two knew each other."
It's the bountyhunter that Amber slides beside, leaning against the bar to call down the bartender and order a beer-in-a-bottle.
Laurel Hensley
Lux laughs and notes that clearly Laurel has people skills because they're working on her...and let's be honest, it sounds kind of like a line. And Laurel, who is already suspicious, arches an eyebrow and interprets it as such. She gives an amused snort and shakes her head. "Near as I can tell you are. Unless you wanna tell me you're here by hologram or you're a figment of my imagination or some shit."
And then, there's someone walking in. Laurel gives her customary glance toward the door every time it opens; it's a natural habit of hers. And this time, she recognizes the person walking in; she knows that scowl and the red-and-born hair, the attitude and the presence that is Amber. She grins a little bit as she comes over...and surprise surprise, she's nodding to the both of them.
"We don't, really. We ran into each other once a few weeks ago, and then tonight. Didn't know you two knew each other."
She glances from one to the other now, then back. "So how the hell are you? Is the new job you dropped me like a burned-down cigarette butt treating you well?" It's said jokingly, without any malice to it.
Amber
[oh shit, did I just vagina-block someone?: empathy to catch the general mood of what I just walked up into]
Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (1, 3, 6, 7) ( success x 2 )
Lux
That bear-bearded biker-guy at the other end of the bar finally gets off of the stool. The creak of wood slosh-slipping against other wood and the hollow-catch of it under the new pop-crackle song, and now Amber, who was carved out've intensity, kissed to life like a golem: earthy, satyric, the interplay of man-made red against brown, the contrast of her eyelashes [or mascara], this thing-at-the-edge-of-Lux's-attention, swept up as she watches smirky smirk just leave, leave, see that he's still being watched, and leave with his intentions written on his shoulders, maybe-hang-around, maybe-run-away, maybe-doesn't-know-yet,
and then
she offers Amber the radiant edge of a pleased smile - lifting her chin off her knuckles, finally deciding to give motion its due and slouch onto a bar-stool instead of just languishing against the bar's edge, and her elbow knocks her drink perilously on edge but she steadies it with two fingers.
"Hey," open-ended hey, doesn't quite trail-away but is one of those heyyys that communicates more, a how-are-you, nice-to-see-you, welcome, artistic solidarity. Didn't know you two knew each other, Laurel says, and Lux slides in with: "One of my goals is to know everyone."
So how the hell are you? Is the new job, etcetera.
"What, were you two going to work together?"
Lux
Lux's hungers - let's call them that - are subsumed right now by other things; sublimated. There is nothing sexual or predatory (right now) about her interest in Laurel, but she does seem comfortable with her - and comfortable dividing her attention between their conversation (which she seems interested in) and the guy who just left (and there, the lingering overtones of threat - smoke over fire) and the room at large. Lux's pleasure at Amber's appearance also seems genuine - an inclusive creature, tonight at least: looking for nothing more than something entertaining to pass the time - and her interest has widened to include the young woman.
Amber
If Amber were wittier (and let's not misunderstand, Amber has plenty of wit and wile) she might say something clever, something about a girl named Door with a power for doors, could make them open into anywhere she liked, that she must go through and connect all of Denver's bar doors to one bar each night and so they all end up in the same place. Night after night. Amber only ever seems to meet people in bars.
Except for Lux, who she met in the most unlikeliest of ways in the most unlikeliest of places and did the most unlikeliest of things. But then it's Lux, who can look like that and dress just so and still manage to look like she belongs wherever she's found herself, be it dive bar or back alley or seven-eleven.
"You're doing a good job of it," she tosses to Lux, whose goal is to know everyone.
Laurel asks her question and as there's no malice, there is no apology in the return. Probably there wouldn't have been, anyway. "Yeah. Yeah, it's good." Amber looks between the duo, one to the other, and notes the things that are familiar about the one, and what is seen with newly opened eyes about the other. See if you can guess which is which.
"Thought about it." A look back to Laurel. "Really thought about it. But then somebody offered me something in my field." And she shrugs, noncommital, like it's no big deal even though it meant turning down something she also would have been good at, at least turning down the fulltime aspect of it.
Laurel Hensley
Just like she wasn't malicious in her joke and Amber didn't give apology, Laruel isn't angry about it. Amber offered to help out if she ever needed it after all, and that's good enough for her. And they'll go out some time and really mess someone's shit up, and that'll be fun. Sure, she could have had a protege of sorts, but this is just fine with her. It lets her keep a bit of those walls up anyway that may have come down, and that's important.
She's oblivious, of course, to what Amber may or may not have noticed from either her or Lux. There's a lot that she isn't aware of, that one day she might be, but for now it's just a few women hanging out at a bar. One she knows and likes (as much as she likes people, anyway), the other she barely knows and doesn't hate. That's a rare occurrance.
"Know everyone, huh? That explains a lot." She chuckles a little bit and then turns her gaze to Amber. "Well, if I had to get turned down at least it was something in your field. I'd hate to have found out you said no and went to go work at the Gap or some shit like that."
Not that she thinks that would have happened, obviously. People like Amber and her don't work at the Gap, in Laurel's estimation. The Gap doesn't want them and they don't want it.
Lux
Lux turns her head (poised, deliberate - quick, like she caught something out of the corner of her eye, which she did) when someone at that booth over there slams their open palm down on the table. Don't mistake: she doesn't seem jumpy, just aware - just briefly hooked by the stimulus, and she stretches her legs out (ballet-careful), pointing her toes like it's good to stretch her calves, then crossing them neatly at the ankles. You're doing a good job, Amber says, and that radiant-edged suggestion of a smile returns, this time filtering through a side-long gaze, dredging shadow up out've the tarnish, present-in-this-moment-amusement that is a dull echo of Laurel's explains a lot and chuckle.
"So far, but there's always somebody new - "
Amber says somebody offered her something in her field, and this causes Lux's metaphorical ears to prick up; she knows Amber as a painter, after all, and with the arrogance of all members of her clan she can have tunnel-vision about it.
" - your field...?" questioning. "Really? Is it exactly what you'd want?"
(Are you happy?)
Amber
No, women like Laurel and Amber don't find mundane retail jobs, or if they happened to have stumbled into one and managed to bullshit their way through an application, an interview, another interview, they were fired within the hour, or within minutes of their first "problem" customer.
Amber makes a noise between her teeth, Tsch. "Yeahno. I wouldn't turn you down to go work in fucking retail."
She's not always the most observant, this one, but with her attention between the women she notices that shift of Lux's attention. As discretely as she can, Amber tilts her head, looks sidelong, curious as to what has caught this creature's attention this time.
Her attention cuts back, sharp and quick, at Lux's questions. The look melts to something almost radiant, and for a moment or two her grin is not quite so cutting.
"Yes," she says, drawing out that sibilant ess just a hair. Yes yes yes that single word says, A thousand times yes. "Painting. Not people's houses, but, you know. Canvas. Walls. Whatever. Art," she says, and they can practically hear the suee of her tone, like she's talking about a new lover but no, this is an old one from whom she'd been separated by adversity and finally reunited. "Creating and maybe curating," she says, just shy of a dreaminess that suddenly snaps out, like she's just realized what she was saying and how she was saying it. Lifting her beer, she holds it before her, glances down at the little opening of the bottle.
Clears her throat. "So yeah. It's good."
[I AM NOT AS EXCITED AS YOU THINK I AM: manip+subt]
Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (4, 7, 8) ( success x 2 )
Laurel Hensley
[[O RLY? Per+Sub]]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (6, 8, 9, 10, 10) ( success x 5 )
Lux
[Er, me too? -1 diff for ze auspex, helping catch nuance since 2013. OR IS IT?]
Dice: 4 d10 TN5 (3, 5, 7, 9) ( success x 3 )
Amber
In case you couldn't tell, Amber is super full of GLEE (and not the terrible television show)
Laurel Hensley
Laurel is an observant person. When you spend all your time tracking down the dregs of society amidst...well, the OTHER dregs of society, you have to learn how to pick out liars. And she knows when people are full of shit, or at least she's decent at it. And right now, she knows just how full of shit Amber is as she plays Miss Disaffected.
But you know what Laurel isn't? She's not stupid. She's not someone who's going to point this out in the middle of a bar in front of some woman who's hitting on Laurel and that she doesn't know. If Amber's trying to play it cool, she has a reason. And Laurel respects the woman enough not to try and rip that reason away to look underneath.
"Well, cool." She nods a little bit at Amber. She doesn't smile; she doesn't intrude on people's joy by trying to interject with a smile and bask in that happiness. That's just fuckin' rude; if they want to share, they'll share. So instead she just gives that nod. "That totally sounds up your alley."
Amber
[Just for fun, check out how good at the arts Amber is: dex+crafts (painting)]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 6, 7, 9, 10, 10) ( success x 5 )
Amber
[7 suxx for the most beautifulest painting in the universe]
Lux
[And just for fun, let's see if Lux's self control would allow her not to BE ENTRANCED BY THAT.]
Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (4, 6, 6, 7) ( success x 3 )
Lux
Lux is an artist - right?
That's the job she tells most people she meets on the street who inquire. It's the easiest truth to hand-out. It covers a multitude of sins. The artist can do anything, can excuse anything, can have what some term a "real job," can be starving, poor, waste-away, thin, can move through any level and every level of society; the Devil's an artist (con-artist, no, artiste), Lucifer was the first Muse and patron. So, whatever crowd she's in, once someone asks, the answer's always - artist.
Unless she's with vampires.But vampires don't usually ask one another what they do, do they?
They already think they know.
Art. Amber says the word like it's a lover's name. Artists can be jealous creatures; who's the muse in bed with now? But what about me? What about my dangling heart, what about my quickened breathing; what about - ? Art is a jealous creature, too. You don't have time for me. I've got others hanging on my line. I can touch them all and I don't care. I don't care at all: Art doesn't care. But it makes you, doesn't it? Especially if you've got a connection to it the way Amber does, so: they share something, but they don't share it. They both know it.
The point is that Lux could be envious but it doesn't seem like she is. Her interest gets a keener edge, something distantly speculative and enshadowed; she doesn't keep herself from smiling, sidelong and lopsided like a compass needle's gotta point north and an angel's gotta rebel or have a sword to earn a name-
"It sounds incredible. I'm envious," she isn't, doesn't sound like she is, "but also pleased as a punch buggy on champagne. When you've got something to show, I hope you call me. How'd it happen?"
Amber
Amber tries to play it cool, but by then it's already too late. She's not good at lying, not good at reading them, either. She has never had a reason to hide her feelings because her feelings were always one of a very few choices on a wheel. Fury. Wrath. Hurt. Suspicion. Distrust. Defense. She never hid all the hate and vitriol she had for the world and the shit lot it dropped her into.
But there has always been this one thing, and it's already been taken from her once. She's protective of it. Defensive because of it. The rest of it would suck to lose, but this, this thing? It would cut her, and it would be a wound from which she would never recover.
They've seen, though, how much it means to her. How much she loves it.
Laurel, though, she lets it be, and that's why Amber likes her. They don't dig at each other, don't go scraping at those defensive walls that are thirty feet high, ten feet thick, brick topped with razor wire. That makes them something like friends, right?
Lux, though. Lux mentions an envy she doesn't feel. Wants to see when Amber's got something to show.
She asks how'd it happen.
And Amber goes quiet. Where does she start? How'd it happen. Well it started with some cockstain in a bar hassling me... And then where would she go with that story? Finger tapping on the sweaty dark glass of her bottle, her mouth quirks thoughtfully. And she shrugs.
"Sometimes fate drops you in front of the right person."
Laurel Hensley
Amber and Lux are artists, and that's a connection that Laurel doesn't get. And that's not to say that she isn't intellectually aware; she acts like an uncultured Phillistene most of the time, sure. But there are depths in this one; they're contained deep within those prison walls she and Amber share, like a prisoner in solitary confinement, stuck reading The Unbearable Lightness of Being and never hoping to see the light of day thanks of a life sentence that they were framed for.
No matter how much those depths exist and how intellectually aware Laurel is though, she doesn't understand, which is different from knowing. They feel passion in creation, and Laurel's only passion is in destroying a face, running down an alley with seven guys behind her shouting about what unseemly things they'll do when they catch her or reducing a bed to ruins in the heat of a sexual fire. Those are very, very different passions.
So she sits back and she listens as they share their passion, albeit in a roundabout way. And Lux asks how it happened, and Amber's answer is evasive. And that, Laurel does understand. You don't talk about the details around the things important to you because knowledge is power. Laurel's power comes from her own knowledge--her absolute certainty--in her worldview. And if others knew more about her she'd lose that power, and so she doesn't.
Instead, she just nods once more to Amber's answer. Again, no smile. "Sometimes it does. Well, good for you. You owe me at least one good, solid brawl with a group of shitheads, though." And at that, she grins finally.
Lux
[Hmm. Are you deliberately playing coy, or is it just a hard story to tell? Tell me, O Potential Insight?]
Dice: 4 d10 TN5 (6, 6, 6, 8) ( success x 4 )
Amber
[Not deliberately coy, but hard because it's complicated, and there is still that wariness and distrustfulness, even about that one singular statement. A disbelief of a sort.]
Lux
The pale-skinned creature - oh, cold-skinned tonight, too, cool-as-marble - does not think of herself as perceptive. Occasionally observant; intellectually so, certainly - but she has never had that edge that separates Toreador from Brujah until recently, and her insights into the inner-workings of other living (so to speak) creatures has come in the occasional flashes. It isn't that she doesn't care, necessarily - it's just that she has not needed to, it's just that she's so very good at other things, it's just that maybe somebody she hated once told her to do something one way so she never did. But Lux apparently has an affinity for Amber; sees Amber like glass, or maybe her namesake, stone full of flaws and shadows - reads her and because she reads her tolerates the non-story with good grace; even lets it pass, for now, into -
You owe me at least one good solid brawl with a group of shitheads, though.
" - what's the best way to start a brawl with a group of shitheads?"
A topic of conversation they could all (?) get behind.
And, tonight, just for now, there is darkness, but it isn't active, it isn't flexing its talons to re-shape Amber, to beat Laurel into a pulp and leave her toothless, isn't trying to steal Laurel's job, isn't making her know that she's right right right about how shitty the world is because people'll always try to get her (though it's not going in the opposite direction; nobody's being actively a dick, is what we're saying), nobody's trying to trigger Amber's short-temper, insinuating grubby hands where grubby hands shouldn't be, and there're no vampires or ghouls (well...) to annoy Lux or activate her hatred.
Just three women, talking.
And eventually, one of them leaves. That woman over there - drugged, maybe; or maybe just drunk now, so hard to tell - needs a cab, and Lux decides to be a decent human being. And after she decides that, maybe she decides to be something else.
And eventually, another will leave -
and another.
No comments:
Post a Comment