Participants:
| Scene Title | Eurotrash |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | The term is accurate and uncomplicated and carries appropriately tawdry connotations. |
| Date | January 25, 2009 |
The pulsing beat of bass throbs through the walls of Rapture, a high-class nightclub in the heart of Harlem. Rows of expensive cars line up out front of the exclusive club and a crowd of would-be patrons wait outside, cherry-picked by the bouncers to have only the cream of the crop on the interior, while leaving just enough eye-candy outside to entice other patrons. The club serves as a respite for the trendy and the influential from the grind of daily life.
On the inside, Rapture is as much a spectacle as it is a structure. Multiple dance floors in tiered balconies overlooking an enormous central dance floor ringed by plush leather-upholstered booths. Pale blue light shines on the wrap-around bar that curved around the back of the establishment, and the entire building is filled floor-to-floor and shoulder-to-shoulder with the pulsing, flowing sea of people dancing to the rythmic beats of electronic dance music piped through the expansive sound-system.
Nightclubs. Not always Sacha's scene, but even romantic Frenchies need some sort of excitement in their lives; not that he doesn't get out of the house, but it's usually to less frenetic locales. But. Well. The mood does strike, as it were. Getting inside these places isn't too hard for foreigners - it's easy enough to pick up a few fine ladies with the accent, and groups of fine ladies tend to be worth their weight in gold when it comes to club admittance. Ditching them isn't terribly difficult, either, once inside. Using ladies and ditching them when they've outlived their usefulness — all part of the game.
After having mingled and done some dancing, Sacha is relaxing, for the moment, at the bar, leaning against aforementioned bar while looking out over the dance floor and sipping a mojito. Clothing is rather less formal than usual, though not quite casual - a short-sleeved button-down shirt, his coat checked in a room somewhere, the shirt's pattern fairly 'fun'. Black jeans, even.
For lack of black jeans, Teo has blue. Also a long-sleeved shirt the gray of slate, black buttons, enough of them left undone to leave the two necklace chain around his neck winking filament gold around the round bones of his vertebrates above the folded line of his collar. He still smells faintly of salt and marina brine; an evening otherwise spent checking and practicing the maneuverability of the small vessel Phoenix had purchased for Wednesday.
There are boots on his feet, a shotglass in his hand, his eyes pleasantly empty as he studies the luminous plastic of the bar-top and the thunder of bass, whoomp, whoomp, threatens to recalibrate his heartbeat to match whatever this trance number is. He's here for the music, mostly. Pubs have alcohol. Sonny owns alcohol. Felix owns alcohol. There's a liquor store down the street from Siann Hall. Alcohol alone wasn't doing it; all he could hear was his heart.
Whoomp, whoomp. Wednesday. Fuck Wednesday, he thinks. Looks up, and sees a Frenchman, though his nationality isn't readily apparent just from looking.
Regretfully, Sacha is indeed not wearing a French flag cape today. … Or any other day for that matter, don't give me that look. Mojito is sipped on, and a lack of any significant alcohol content is noted. Easier to water down mixed drinks, even though they're more expensive than straight liquor. Booze is cheaper bought retail, but liquor stores can't heal loneliness, and Bacardi doesn't come with mix CDs.
Sipping his drink more, Sacha proceeds to look around the bar. Pretty much everyone sitting there either has a conversational partner, is talking to one bartender or another, or is otherwise distracted by the same dance floor that he'd just been observing. Looks over and sees an Italian, though his nationality is assumed to be American just from looking. Also notices that he himself has been noticed by the same fellow; funny how that always works out. Finishes his drink, or the majority of it, at least, and sets the glass down, idly strides along the edge of the bar, one thumb hooked in a beltloop, the other arm dangling at his side.
Loneliness must necessarily be assuaged by other means: it's hard to talk in here. Whoomp, whoomp. Not that Teo had an adjacent companion anyway; there's no one for him to elbow at, to whisper to: Jesus, he's coming over. He's looking. How's my breath? He'd folded his shirt tag down himself, and quelled his surfeit of nervous energy with tequila bought on his own dime.
The tiny glass is sent rattling back across the table with a deft catapault flick of middle finger and thumb. Despite that he hasn't looked back down, Teo manages not to underestimate the distance to the edge of the bar, doesn't wind up accidentally breaking anything. He is watching with the aspect of some Arctic owl on a low branch, too wild in his all-consuming ignorance to enact the hysterics of feral fear, something akin to speculation in his pallid eyes, neither sanguine nor sexless. He blinks, and drops his gaze to the next stool over.
Nervousness. That's cute. And a bit unexpected; he certainly doesn't look like that sort. Sacha's expression, however, doesn't change beyond the addition of a little half-smirk. Nothing mocking; a bit of amusement at his ability to evoke that sort of response, if anything. Neither his trajectory nor speed of approach change with this development, though he is a bit relieved that the approach hasn't caused his target to decide to disappear. Responses are sometimes difficult to guess, but part of the fun is in eliciting and observing the reactions. Narcissist.
He does do a quick once-over on his own attire before getting in close enough for Teo to notice any discrepancies. Sleeves are checked to make sure they aren't folded over, he tugs at his shirt to ensure that it's tucked evenly. Shoes aren't untied, that would be a bit awkward. Once he does finally complete his approach, it's from behind - shut up - as the Frenchman stands to one side of the Italian, leaning towards his ear, making certain not to actually make physical contact. Arms folded behind his back, he observes, in quite heavily accented English, just loud enough to be heard, "Would you prefer I hadn't noticed you?"
There are about a dozen stereotypes that would accurately characterize Teo's set of reactions. Most of them are embarrassing and have obscure colloquial names that would probably elicit wolf whistles and leering laughter from much of the demographic he so recently joined. He doesn't know any of those names. Hilariously, he's too new. Were one or two more shades of vagina involved somewhere in this, maybe he would have less drymouth, pulse, gooseflesh, or frenetic saccadic eye-movement between the bar, errant shotglass and the oblique line of one thigh casually skewed out from his other. For a moment, he had thought Sacha had simply walked on by.
Two and a half decades of Catholic programming aren't going to vanish overnight. Nor over a month. At least he doesn't spill onto the floor to join the rest of the liquor stains and boot-shaped beer puddles. "Mi dispiace." When in doubt, apologize. For rudeness or stupidity. Teo turns his head, slowly, angles, so that he might measure the space alotted to him without changing it, and judge the face on the other side of it at the same time. There should be a monosyllabic answer here. Yes or No. Simple. Easy. Harmless, either way.
He's just — saving his courage up for later. "Not that. I just didn't understand," Teo answers, ridiculously, just above the level of electronica.
Sacha had faced ahead when asking his question, so as to avoid breathing on Teo's /face/, but … well, avoiding physical contact is a bit of a difficulty, as close as he is. Breathe too deeply and he'd be lying on Teo's back. In a manner of speaking. He does catch that head-turn, and, with a wink, pulls away so as to sit on the stool next to his newfound companion. Body language is noted, as is the lack of a 'yes' in response to his own query.. though he isn't narcissistic enough to neglect to notice the similar lack of 'no'. These things take time, he's used to having to work for what he wants. Proximity may not be the best tactic here.
He sits facing Teo, legs spread casually, one arm folded against the bar, the other hand resting on his thigh. Taking up rather a lot of space, even if one isn't the type to usually notice that sort of thing. "Italian?" he asks, with a smile that shows that he already knows the answer. "I would speak, but I do not know much of it.." A bit of a pause there, as he thinks for a moment, leaning back in his chair. "«Where do I find the tourist information center?»" Then, in English, "Why do you apologize, and what do you not understand?" Let's get down to business.
Business. The shift in Sacha's manner suits Teo just as well, though less because his frame of mind is same than because it's a little funny and a little reassuring, the impersonal tack and kindly humoring mingling in the posture of the lither young man sitting opposite him. He's seen that in a lot of men lately. 'Oh, Teo,' they seem to say, the diaphanous contours of their sigh laced through with exasperation that fails entirely to undercut their other interests. There's a funny little smile in response, hooding the Sicilian's eyes; he picks up his foot, as if make Sacha space, but his heel ends up falling in exactly the same place it had before. They bump knees.
"We can speak whatever you want," he answers, in a tone too factual to be specifically audacious. His eyes deepen with easy gratitude for the effort at Italian, for what it was. "Mandarin, Russian. Sanskrit would take me longer.
"I apologized for misunderstanding." Sheepish, his gaze swerves downward; acknowledgment, he knows he has a problem. His eyes shift up. He runs a thumb nail down his inner arm as if to peel loose a patina of sea or sweat salt. "I wasn't sure I knew what you were doing. I'm not doing a very good job of explaining," he observes, wryly, some shadow moving through the fluorescent blue parts of his underlit features. "It's a bad week. I'm not in the mood to dance. Out there. I'll go somewhere else, if you want to do something else."
Hapless as a child offering a handful of melted candy, his smile broadens. His shoulder steepens under the fabric of his shirt, a shrug or restless shift of posture and he — recedes around the curve of his bicep without precisely surrendering, the same subtle inversion of waves without moving the sea: he hopes he did not offend.
Sacha leans in closer to Teo, his head tilted just a bit. Genuine amusement mixing in there, though it still is somewhat at the other man's expense. Not entirely unintentionally. His hand moves forward a bit, to gently touch Teo's bumping knee - a light touch, nothing more, though his hand doesn't retreat without any verbal or nonverbal request. "It would not be fair for us to speak French," he comments, calmly. "I can do the same few phrases in Italian, Spanish, German, but none of them would take us anywhere but mon appartement." Very smooth, he doesn't seem to have a problem with stating that so plainly.
"If I am right, we both know English second? So that would be the most fair." He idly starts to stroke that knee with his thumb, provided his hand hasn't already been nudged away. "Why are you here if you do not want dancing? There are places to drink that aren't so crowded. Or hard to enter," he adds, after a moment of thought. And as far as that offer goes, he smiles again - even less mocking now, the more comfortable he gets conversing. "We can leave, if you like, but you.. open doors, as they say, with how you said it, oui?"
"Eh, oui." It wouldn't kill Teo to talk awhile. There are hands, promises of other things, and it's already been established he'd feel about that: cruising for carnal companionship, and carnal companionship. It would salve his conscience, or the codefied protocols of stuffy propriety, if they talked awhile. The conflict presents itself with little subtlety across the Italian's features, pensive cast harshening the knit of his brow but a certain heat hazing the eyes that study Sacha from across the distance of the Frenchman's wiery arms. He isn't about to knock Sacha's hands away.
A subtle strain takes the length of muscle under the thumb, but Teo neither sweats nor forgets to blink. "Ambience," he replies, after enough time to assign words to the truth. "It's okay to just sit in. The music is good." Loud, he means. "I like the place's name, I guess: it's hard to help the subliminal appeal even if the irony is pretty fucking… flagrant. Like most of my countrymen, I was born Catholic. You're not dancing either, amico," he observes then, straightening his arm, posture aligning closer. A brief swell of orange and fuchsia lights steeple their shadows together.
Sacha holds up a finger, wags it back and forth briefly. Ah-ah-ah. "I was," he notes. "I was taking a break." A pause. "Hunting," he admits, without any shame. "This is why tonight I come here instead of a bar. If you like the music and not the dancing, maybe you need a radio?" Although somehow the idea of drinking while listening to a staticy radio is more depressing than the idea of drinking in silent solitude. At least in the latter picture the lack of companionship isn't as emphasized.
"We did not have religion in my home, maybe because my father loves England. There, they do not care. My parents.. they are religous, but never emphasized it, yes?" There is another pause there. "You are better with English than me. I was much in London as a boy, but I do not care for my studies as much as other things." Sidelong, he tilts his head just enough to see where the nearest bartender is. Considering another drink, though he hasn't yet made up his mind as to whether or not to order one. Budgetary concerns. "The language is very rough. However, I do enjoy the vulgarities. «What is your name?»" Italian.
It wouldn't have been a more blatant hint to the Teo's-eye-view of things if the other man had grasped his head, twisted it toward the bartender and pointed. Though unfamiliar with the customs of picking up men, he's picked up enough people to know the general program of things. He flags the woman down with a hand up, requests another two shots, permits Sacha his additional cocktail or other beverage of preference. He doesn't bother assuring the man that he's rolling in it, because he isn't; it is what it is. The most expensive thing he owns right now is a machine-gun, and that was a gift.
"Radio wouldn't have ambience," he points out, lightly enough, despite that one must force enough weight into their voice to dent an impression on the throbbing waves of sound. "And it wouldn't be loud enough.
"I understand about religion." It's an overly-broad statement that might cast doubt as to the quality of Teodoro's English, or perhaps he merely grows lazy with words facing the prospect of other things. His fingers find his shotglass when it is renewed. "Teodoro." Tay-oh-doro. "My friends call me Teo." Tee-oh. Americans. "Et toi?" He knocks the liquor back without a twitch of the corded jaw it snaps shut around.
It wouldn't have been a more blatant hint to the Teo's-eye-view of things if the other man had grasped his head, twisted it toward the bartender and pointed. Though unfamiliar with the customs of picking up men, he's picked up enough people to know the general program of things. He flags the woman down with a hand up, requests another two shots, permits Sacha his additional cocktail or other beverage of preference. He doesn't bother assuring the man that he's rolling in it, because he isn't; it is what it is. The most expensive thing he owns right now is a machine-gun, and that was a gift.
"Radio wouldn't have ambience," he points out, lightly enough, despite that one must force enough weight into their voice to dent an impression on the throbbing waves of sound. "And it wouldn't be loud enough.
"I understand about religion." It's an overly-broad statement that might cast doubt as to the quality of Teodoro's English, or perhaps he merely grows lazy with words facing the prospect of other things. His fingers find his shotglass when it is renewed. "Teodoro." Tay-oh-doro. "My friends call me Teo." Tee-oh. Americans. "Et toi?" He knocks the liquor back without a twitch of the corded jaw that snaps shut around it.
Sacha really hadn't expected Teo to offer a drink - three more seconds and he would have performed the same action himself, although the other way around, naturally. After all, he is the one doing the stalking, so generally he'd be the one doing the drink buying. … This probably works different with guys who are only incidentally attracted to the same sex. … And Europeans. Either way, he requests a rum and coke this time around, and when it arrives he spends a few moments swirling it around in the glass before drinking it at all.
"Ambience, yes." A sip from the drink, and a few more idle swirls. "Some night, you go to the roof of a high building, you take a blanket and a radio and a bottle of something. Looking at the stars, it is easy to lose yourself." There's the romanticism again. "Teo," he repeats. Tay-oh. "I am Sacha. It is not a girl's name," he adds, with only the tiniest hint of defensiveness. That couldn't possibly be something he's sick of hearing. Americans. "Is it alright for you now, talking with me? Should we go elsewhere?" He doesn't mean talking. The hand on Teo's knee moves up a bit, approaching an elbow, now.
Incidentally attracted to the same sex, as if the opposite was to be able to choose strictly otherwise by design. Teo has very little doubt that he would have. It's messy. He keeps thinking he's going to run into someone he knows here, or if he's out with Sonny, and he'll be subject to some disgusted look out from underneath a skeptical eyebrow, find himself beset by the urge to move away or to explain. Which would be terrible. Discourteous. Losing yourself. He grins at that, shows teeth, sharp and white and momentarily mirthless. Insofar as she's never merely applied words to it, his aunt advises otherwise.
"It's nice to meet you, Sacha of France, England, and other Godless heathens. I don't have a blanket or a radio, and I think the liquor stores are all closed." None of that romanticism here, regretfully. Some part of Teo does regret that, sincerely, though there is no specific darkness in the hand that closes on the inside of Sacha's reaching wrist, sliding the coarse grain of his fingers against the run of sleek skin, seamless arteries, and innumerable nerve endings, in up the rim of Sacha's sleeve. "Si, it's all right.
"I wouldn't mind going elsewhere." Yes. No. Yes. Sometimes, he's terrible even when he doesn't mean to be.
Sacha relinquishes his arm to Teo's exploration, and while he is a bit disappointed at his romantic ramblings not being received as he had hoped, he is certainly glad for the physical contact. Hands on knees are well enough, but the layer of clothing adds too much interference. It isn't entirely personal. He pushes himself to his feet, gently, almost cautiously avoiding moving his arm, as if afraid of scaring Teo away from where he's gotten, but the other hand is lifted now to rest against the side of the man's head. Thumb rubbing again for a moment, fingers trace through hair, brushing, but with no scratches or unpleasant tugs.
He leans in again, standing close to the Italian, and lips press gently against forehead. "My little Italian," he murmurs, with little real semblance of posession. "If you do not object, I have a place near. My room is not far from here," repeated in Italian; one of the few phrases alluded to previously. "There are places less private, if you prefer."
Sacha pages: i thought of a terrible thing for sacha to say over resonance-broken dishes and omelettes [the next morning]
You paged Sacha with 'tell me'
Sacha pages: "you visit again sometime, maybe? if you are walking by the building perhaps ring the bell, and if i am home i buzz you in, like a bee. some stings i do not mind so much."
Long distance to Sacha: Teo is killed.
From afar, Sacha murderer D:
You paged Sacha with '2nd degree'
Sacha pages: oh good that's better then
You paged Sacha with 'are you going to say sacha actually said that'
Sacha pages: i might have to
 January 24th: To Shoot or not to Shoot |
 January 25th: Backpedal |