Participants:
Scene Title | It's On, Now! |
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Synopsis | Isis and Diogenes go somewhere special - Burlesque. There, an unspoken war bursts out, where both try to put each other in trouble. So far, it's a tie! |
Date | August 26, 2009 |
A flashy little strip club, its name advertised in bright neon pink above the door in swooping cursive, with the figure of a woman outlined in the same seeming to kick a leg with each flash of the light. Two bouncers stand by the door, which is a reflective chrome and stays closed unless opened by the security duo, with a red carpeting extending out onto the pavement. They will check you for I.D. before permitting you entrance. You'll be greeted by a woman in full burlesque regalia, with exaggerated makeup, a corset that barely keeps everything in, fishnets and feathers. Provided you can pay the cover charge, she will show you to a table, offer to get your first drink of the evening, and leave you alone to enjoy what Burlesque has to offer.
The main room's focal point is the generous stage, a circular platform with Broadway lights around the edges, and a catwalk that extends further out into the scattered round tables where patrons can sit and drink. The lights that shine down on it are never particularly clear, often shards of pink, green, blue, which hide as much as they reveal. There is almost always a dancer on the stage, even as even more girls move around the room to give more intimate shows on tabletops. There's a long bar that crawls along one side of the room, with a couple of bartenders behind it, a counter of black glass with rows and rows of liquor on display on glass shelves. Leather booths are tucked away towards the back, offering some privacy for whatever purpose.
Despite the proposed theme of the club, impressions of burlesque only factor in with the permanent staff and particular shows of featured dancers. Otherwise, the tunes are standard for any kind of strip club, and the girls will wear what they like. There are private lounges for more expensive, personal shows, and a darkly lit, obscured staircase leading up to both dressing rooms and the manager's office.
Where would you take your friend and a potential love interest? A cafe in a relatively calm and tranquil district? Or would you perhaps take her to a karaoke night? An expensive, overly posh restaurant?
Diogenes's answer to that is a strip club. The famous (or perhaps infamous) Happy Dagger is no more, but Burlesque has recently opened its doors, and the young man was certainly curious. Even more so when one considers the fact that he was never in an establishment of this sort. The lewd sort, that is. Knowing full well that Isis is no ordinary woman who enjoys sipping whine with her chin held high, he realised she wouldn't hotly object being taken to Burlesque.
After going through security with just a minor hiccup, Diogenes leads Isis to the empty table that is closest to the stage. He's wearing his usual expensive outfit - black, of soft fabric, contrasted by a silk white shirt. As he sits down, he eyes the stage with a lofted brow. "This is… interesting."
"Oh, my sweet, little virgin…" How pleasant such little tauntings ring on her new airy, alto tones. It would be a wonder if she'd ever acclimate to it and keep such things in check.
Isis folds into the seat beside Diogenes, her eyes already roaming appreciatively to the performance on stage. "You've really never been to a strip club?" She asks, but does not wait for an answer - for all his talk, she's not surprised.
The redhead leans towards Diogenes in her arm chair - places such as these always had armchairs, for the convenience of the dancers, of course. She cants her head playfully to the side, flashing him a smile that is both amused and sweet. He instilled such mixed feelings in her, after all. "You know what that means? I have to buy you a lapdance." She grins.
The first phrase that Isis slings in her companion's direction elicits nothing but a glance. But in the time span of that glance, Diogenes would imagine his hands wrapping around her slender neck and choking all living force out of her.
Apparently, he does not go through with that. Instead, he keeps his attention on the stage, looking at the show offered as though he was watching opera. His eyes dissected the scene, rather than accepting the dancers at face value and enjoying exposed skin and curves. It's as though he was an alien from Mars who was writing an essay for Martian High School about females. Diogenes had no problem appreciating feminine beauty, no; it's just that he never had the libido to go crazy over the tiniest speck of flesh revealed.
"Lap dance?" He cranes his neck slowly to look over to Isis and make sure her facial expression confirms that was not a joke. "I—" He is interrupted by the appearance of the waitress. Thank Lord Almighty, he has time to actually think up a witty response. "At the risk of being shot down for being cliche… I'll have a glass of piƱa colada — If you have it." He would look back to Isis expectantly, wondering if she'll order anything.
"Grateful Dead," Isis offers by way of instruction to the waitress. Who, with both orders taken, slips away to fetch the drink. The redhead turns back to her partner in crime with a smile that boarders on being just a bit too bubbly for the girl that aims to be anything but.
"Yes, a lapdance. You know, you should also go up to the stage and tip your dancer." She nods in all seriousness. She lifts a hand and makes a gesture of tapping two fingers down in the air. "Just slip that bill right in the g-string, and they'll give ya a little botty shake." Apparantly, her aim for the evening is to turn the tables on her poor friend. Maybe even get him to blush. She flashes a cocky grin and leans back in her armchair, turning her attention back to the stage.
Waiting for Isis to speak of her order, Diogenes occasionally glances towards the stage in a unique manner, as though checking up on and looking after a much younger sibling.
"I'm not a moron. I know how lap dances work. In theory." Yes, in theory. He looks over to the stage. And as his eyes remain fixated on one of the girl, he muses aloud: "I'd much rather have you give me a lap dance than any of these ditzy college students."
"You're really trying hard, aren't you?" His eyes now rest on Isis once more, and a smirk slowly but surely makes its way onto his lips. "I'm amazed you haven't asked for a gender change while you were at it", he remarks in a lower tone, even if that was hardly necessary when everyone's attention was most likely on the girls. "Wonder if that Evolved can actually do that. How bizzare and awkward would that be?" These musings had a purpose, but one Diogenes sought to hide under layers and layers of subtlety.
A thin, light-hued brow pops up a bit more quickly, and just a smidgen higher, than is likely appropriate for the conversation. Gender change. The redhead rolls her shoulders back in an effort to dissuade the tension beginning to creep up her spine in discomfort. "Why would I get a sex change?" she inquires with a feigned wrinkle of her nose and a too-casual shrug of her shoulders. "What's done is done," she seals the matter of her bodily transformation, shutting the door on the topic and those linked to it.
The waitress seems to be on a lucky roll, returning with the couple's drinks just in time to cloud the conversation further as she sets out each glass with a smile and dismisses herself with a flirty wink. Isis's hand goes straight for the glass. "Anyway, it'll take more than money to earn a lapdance from me," she quips with a returned, mischevious smirk before sipping at the straw of her darkly hued drink.
Were Diogenes any other man, he would most likely have noticed the shut doors and accepted the dead end. Were Diogenes any other man, he most likely wouldn't even have delved into that topic. Even after Isis says the golden phrase 'what's done is done', even after the waitress brings them their drinks, the dark-haired, grim-eyed adult stubbornly refuses to leave the topic aside; and as soon as the waitress leaves them with a single word of gratitude from Dio, he looks to Isis with malevolently inquisitive appearance on his visage.
"That was an interesting reaction. Oh, I'm sorry, you were supposed to make me flustered", he 'apologises', throwing up a casual hand gesture before wrapping his digits around his glass and bringing it closer to him so that he could sip some of it. "Hmh. Not as good as I expected, but… Good enough." He leans back and dedicates Isis his full attention once again. "Tell me", he says, his smirk shining in its full glory, "what would you do if you were a man for a day? And what kind of man would you like to be." A single brow is raised inquisitively.
"I have been a man before," she states simply enough, holding a serious expression for only a moment before her peachy lips break into a little smirk. "For a week. I rode in fast cars, enjoyed a fancy hotel, hung out with other men, flirted, played videos games." She chuckles and gives an easy shrug before sipping at her drink again.
Her hazel gaze turns back to Tom. "Well - what would you do if you were a woman?" she inquires with a quick glance back towards the stage.
Her answer catches him off-guard. It does not entirely answer what he has asked, but he forgot that she indeed has stolen a body before; he even forgot that was the prologue of the mess she's plunged into, the mess she's climbed out of after a full body makeover. "That information is stuck somewhere between 'interesting' and 'oh my god, what the hell am I listening to'. Then again, I did start this." His smirk, which has disappeared, tugs at the corners of his lips, but those efforts go down the drain when Isis asks reflects his question.
"I would…" He furrows his brows, absent-mindedly watching the girls on stage. Come on, he needed his wittiness now more than ever. Nearly a dozen possible replies occur to him, but none of them he finds as fitting as he'd like. "Get laid, of course", he finally replies after silence of undue length. After tossing a glance at his drink, he rises up from his seat. "One to zero. You win this round."
"Oh, I haven't won just yet," Isis replies with a wicked-sweet grin. She rises in tandem with Tom and sets a hand to his chest, aiming to still him and conduct him back down into his seat. She looks up over the edge of his chair then and beams a bright smile to someone at his back, lifting a hand in greeting before turning her fingers in a fluid, beckoning motion.
Her attention turns back to Tom before she perches back on the cushion of her armchair wih a proud demeanor, waiting, waiting, waiting, though it's not long before a dark haired stripper struts into view, setting a hand to the top of Tom's chair as she looks to the duo. "Hello, guys."
Isis grins blatantly.
Thomas eyes the hand presses against his chest with the aim to coerce him to return to his seat. He does, even if he looks up at Isis with a snort. Expectantly, he tilts his head to the side and crosses his arms, all the while comfortably reclining against the back of his comfortable seat; a look that overall seemed to say, 'Amuse me'. He doesn't look back to see who it is she is waving at, for he is able to guess who it is she beckons closer seductively.
His confirmation arrives with the greeting, and he swiftly turns to face the stripper with a wide, smug grin on his lips. "Hey, gorgeous", he addresses the girl, "You look great tonight. And you arrived just in time; I was about to just go up to the stage and bribe one of the girls to come down." He gestures to Isis with a nod. "My fair lady here is in a strip club for the first time, and, to put it bluntly, she has a thing or two for boobs." As he speaks, a free hand delves into his pocket to retrieve a fair amount of sum. "So, how about a lap dance?", he inquires, stuffing said wad of cash behind the string of the stripper's suggestively skimpy underwear.
Isis's smirk melts away bit by bit until the redhead is left gawking after Diogenes and the stripper. Must save face. Must save face. The comment about boobies, however, draws Isis's attention to the other woman's basooms. BLUSH!
"Really. Really, this isn't my frist time. I asked you over to give him a lapdance," she fumbles hurriedly, adding a feigned, casual chuckle to the end of her statement.
The stripper grins. "Well, if this isn't your frist time, you know how this works." She winks and plucks the offered bills from Diogenes's fingers before turning fully to the redheaded woman. Isis's pale features are a bright red, but her smile is uncontrolably beaming with both amusement and embrassment, as the stripper hooks a knee up onto the arm of the chair and begins to do what she does best - exotic dancing.
"I have the money, I make the rules", states the man bluntly, and, looking over to the stripper, motions for her to move over to Isis. "Tonight, you will have fun." Of course, the tone with which he said that actually meant, 'Tonight, I show you not to mess with me'. His grin reinforced that message. His elbows are propped up on the back of the comfy sofa, and his legs are royally crossed at the hips. All in all, he looks like a King who's content with the sentence he carried out.
Isis tips in her seat, looking around the strippers hip to flash Diogenes an overly sweet smile, that read as plainly as his last words into a translation of - 'I'll get you back for this.'
Her attention does not linger long away from the sultry frame paid to dance before her though, as she sinks back in her seat and accepts her horrible, horrible fate. When the strippers down, she offers the lady a quick wink and a flirty smile. "You're a doll," she notes, and tips the lady further. "Come back around and be sure to give my friend here some special attention, but in the mean time, I have to find a new way to embarrass him. He won this round."
The stripper offer a giggle, brushes her fingers over Isis's hair, and dismisses herself with a flirty wink in Tom's direction.
The redhead leans forward slowly. "You're an ass," she says over a bright grin before she sticvks her tongue out at Tom.
Although Isis is the one receiving regal attention, the view that unravels before Diogenes is a savoury one. A pleasant-to-the-eye and playful stripper giving a lap dance to a busty redhead, and all this gift wrapped in the nice package of his friend's humiliation. This was much better than any personal lap dance he will have ever received. A hand is extended to grasp the tall glass of his alcoholic cocktail, and he takes a few lazy sips whilst admiring the scene at his side. He hasn't had this much amusement in a long while, and for the first time in New York City, Thomas can relax. This is going to be a night to remember.