The Muscle

Participants:

deckard_icon.gif eileen_icon.gif magnes_icon.gif

Scene Title The Muscle
Synopsis At Burlesque in search of Logan, Magnes encounters Deckard and Eileen instead.
Date March 21, 2010

Burlesque


While one might not usually say that Magnes has much in common with a pimp, at this particular moment, he needs some extra funds for his car repairing project. So early in the evening, entering Burlesque wearing his black jacket designed like Venom's costume, blue jeans, and black snow boots, he's ready to march into Logan's office and say 'Gimmie my money bitch'.

That last quote is what he has in common with a pimp, by the way.

He's walking through the tables, occasionally staring at the stage, but seems pretty intent on heading to the stairs.

As Magnes is headed toward the stairs, someone else is on their way down them, navigating the steps in a pair of three-inch high heels with one hand clutching the banister to prevent a broken leg — or worse, neck. A black overbust corset made from crushed velvet laces up the back, brings in the dancer's waist and gives her an attractive hourglass silhouette that her slender could not otherwise achieve. A pair of matching gloves that cut off at the elbow, silk stockings, garters and rhinestones that glitter in her hair and on other parts of her costume all contribute to the image she's attempting to evoke, but it's the feathers she wears that ultimately draws the comparison between Eileen Ruskin — sorry, Spurling — and a glossy black swan with a dark red mouth.

Not yet sufficiently healed from her encounter with Emile Danko to take the stage, she turns toward the bar when she hits the bottommost step and lingers there, pale eyes skipping over Magnes as she searches the club's floor for a suitable mark.

Deckard is sober. For the most part. Given that he's also on the job, this is arguably for the best.

He's dressed better than the likes of Magnes is likely accustomed to seeing him, dark, sooty grey suit pinstriped with fine lines of ash. His tie is silvery grey; the shirt under that, crisp white and buttoned straight at the collar.

His long face is even (mostly) devoid of bruising for once — past injuries limited to a faint tinge of yellow around the socket of his left eye. He's not far from the stage, slouched down into a seat at a table to rest his feet while he sips vacantly at a glass of water. So far it's making out to be a slow night.

Magnes stares at first, for quite a few seconds, eyes practically rolling over Eileen's legs before he quickly shakes his head and peers into her eyes without pulling his hood down. The hood, by the way, looks as if Venom is eating his head. "Please tell me this is a complete misunderstanding and you wandered in here from a costume party." he says without a hint of humor in his tone, waiting for a suitable explanation.

She'd been about to step down and glide her way across to Deckard, whose company is preferable to that of anyone else in the room, but before she can claim him for the scarce few minutes she's able to spare between clients, the sound of Magnes' voice cuts clearly through sonorous bass, the tinkle of ice at the bottom of a dozen faux crystal glasses and — if anyone is choosing to listen carefully enough — shrill, tittering laughter floating out from one of the adjacent wings where the private lounges are be found.

The look she gives him is equally humourless. "Are you even twenty-one?"

With his grizzled hair shorn into a buzz short enough that it's difficult to scruff into disorder and the suit and even stubble shaved down into a level grain that might even qualify as ~stylish~ in the setting, Flint blends in to the Burlesque's background the way snakes blend into dead leaves and forest detritus.

The way his eyes occasionally flicker alive with electric blue intensity even blends into the atmosphere — hardly a point of focus for a clientele more interested in what's happening on stage. Right hand curled up to scuff lazily after an itch somewhere around his mouth, he lets his eyes go dim long enough for him to pick at something dried tarry brown-red under his middle fingernail. Eileen's movement in his direction is nearly missed in the process.

It's more chance than vigilance that Magnes's duds catch at the corner of his peripheral vision and he sits up a little straighter, brow knit. His spidy senses are tingling.

"I'm twenty-two." Magnes holds his hand out to her, though doesn't make a move to grab her, he's offering at the moment. "If you need money, I'll give you money, I don't care about that. But I'm not letting you work in a place like this, for a person like him. We're leaving."

Two words: sheer incredulity. This is the expression Eileen would be wearing if she had less restraint. Instead, the corners of her painted mouth tick down into a frown and she moves to maneuver past Magnes at the base of the stairs, slim hips angled sideways between the banister and the blockage his body makes. "Where I choose to work and who I choose to work for is none of your bleeding business," she reminds him in a tight, prim voice pulled tauter than the laces of her corset. "We are not going anywhere."

"I told you I'd give you money if you need it, so what's the problem? You're too good to work in a place like this, Eileen." Magnes reaches out to gently take her hand, not being forceful, but trying to keep her in one place so he can talk. "What would Kazimir say about you doing this? It's not right, Eileen, it's just not. I won't let you, just… let me help you with whatever it is you need."

"For God's sake, Magnes." Eileen flicks her hand away when his fingers brush against her wrist through the fabric of her glove. "This isn't a brothel." She can imagine what Kazimir might say about it, but like her mother Sophia, Kazimir stopped having authority over her decisions a long time ago. That Magnes has the audacity to bring her dziadzio into what is turning into a swiftly escalating argument causes her cheeks to flush an indignant shade of pink, heat radiating off her body and light fixtures blushing above their heads.

"I don't want your money," she iterates. "Your pity, either. It's entirely unnecessary."

Too tall and too grim to make for a particularly efficient ambush predator even in this environment, Deckard is hard to miss in his approach even if it is from behind. From behind Magnes, that is.

Narrow jaw slung low into a set, ears ajut and brows knit, he hovers like a hawk on a post, close enough to search Eileen's face for a prompt to play trashman but not near enough to smother with the whiskey stink of his presence. That is to say, he hangs back.

Conspicuously.

"It's not pity, Eileen. Do you honestly think I like the idea of you… showing yourself, for a person like Logan, or anyone? You're my friend, do you seriously think I would just stand here and let you be a stripper? It's not pity to not wanna watch my friend do something like this…" Magnes crosses his arms, giving her a firm stare. "I don't care about pride or any of that, I'd rather you let me help you than watch you do something like this. I'm not letting you do this. If I have to carry you out of here and then come back and march into Logan's office, you're not doing this. I'll help you however you need, Eileen, forget this pride crap, you don't need to be doing this."

Eileen's eyes lift over Magnes' shoulder and settle on Deckard, long and crocodilian behind him with eyes and the top of his snout poking out of the water or some other similarly appropriate metaphor involving jaws that snap. There's an explanation rolling around her mouth, something about what rights Magnes does and doesn't have when it comes to intruding in her personal life, but then he's talking about hefting her up over his shoulder and something glittering and dangerous enters her eyes.

Somewhere, there is a line, and at some point during his quiet tirade he crossed it. "You're right," she concedes finally. "I don't need to be doing this. I want to. Flint?"

The hand that lands on Magnes's shoulder is long and callused, tendon and bone written out across the back in familiar pathways of white under winding veins and pale scars. Gentle pressure isn't really Flint's style, and his fingertips bite in like blunt teeth on their way to pulling the younger man firmly back and away.

"Not your business, not the time," says Deckard, "definitely not the place."

"Who are you to tell me what's my business?" Magnes has no idea why Deckard's even here right now, but the older man can feel an invisible force starting to tighten around his wrist in response to the firm pull that jerks the younger back.

"Eileen, look me right in the eye and say that this is really what you want to do, that it's not just pride keeping you from letting me help you. You're my friend, and, while I don't approve of this, and I know it's not my place to approve or disapprove of anything, if this is what you want, I'll leave it alone. But if you're doing this for any other reason, even if it's one you won't tell me, then I want you to talk to me later, at least explain so I won't worry about you, alright?" He tries to give the situation a more gentle approach, trying to choke back how upset he is at the current situation.

That Magnes is more upset than Eileen should probably tell him all he needs to know if he would only look in a mirror. Unfortunately, the Englishwoman's dark pupils make for a very poor looking glass, so the only things he has to go off of are their placid sheen and steadiness of her voice when says to him very plainly, "If this wasn't something I wanted, there is nothing that could keep me here."

"The muscle," is Deckard's plain answer in turn, even more succinct than Eileen's. Possibly, feeling gravity's grip on muscle and bone is enough to inspire such directness, particularly in the presence of so much shatterable glass and expensive decor. "The quieter you go, the less likely I am to be fired. Unless, of course, you think working in a place full of scantily clad young women wrapping themselves around poles is torture for me, too."

Magnes holds up a hand for Deckard to just give him one moment, frowning at Eileen more in disappointment, in himself, than anything else. He's got one of those looks that says he's gonna beat himself up about it all night. "Just… talk to me later, alright? That's all. I don't pity you, I consider you a friend, and I mean that."

There's a sigh, and he looks back at Deckard. "I don't wanna get you fired, so let's go. But don't look at Eileen when she's on stage or I'll break your nose." He doesn't sound completely serious, but with him it's hard to tell.

Far be it from Eileen to point out that Magnes won't know if Deckard is looking at her while she's onstage — and if he does, she certainly isn't going to tell him or anyone else about it. One hand grips the banister while the other splays fingers across her bare thigh for lack of anything better to be doing as she continues to stand there, half on the stairs and half off them, gaze no longer fixed on Magnes' face but rather what's on his shoulder.

She makes a decision, and with a grateful look afforded to Deckard from beneath her kohl-lined lashes, she departs the steps and makes a beeline toward the bar, leaving the heady aroma of cheap French perfume and baby powder in her wake.

"Okay," says Deckard, mainly because he's held enough job-shaped things in his life and is sober enough to know that goading people into publicly breaking your nose is a good way to get fired. That he inevitably says okay while looking at Eileen's legs as if in instinctive reaction to the question of whether he would or wouldn't probably doesn't help his case much, but if he's lucky (which he never is) Magnes is preoccupied enough not to notice.

"Things have been okay," muttered once he's moved to steer Varlane vaguely towards the exit as promised, Flint nods absently to another hired hand on the way. No assistance needed. "I try to keep an eye on her."

Magnes is preoccupied… by also staring at Eileen's legs. He won't be staring at Tracy for a few days, Eileen is now the height of sexuality! "I still don't like it." he says quite grumpily, heading for the door with Deckard without protest. "And for Logan of all people. He owes me money, I'll have a talk with him."

"You don't have to like it." Deckard evidently doesn't care enough to be grumpy in return. Against all odds, things are going his way, and if Magnes wants to sneak back in and give Logan what for when he has his back turned, well. He's being paid to maintain order. Not as personal security.

Gentleman enough to pull and hold the door open, he refrains from ssshoving Magnes out where the cold outside is invitation enough to get out. Or so he hopes. "I'll let him know you're looking for him."

"When I don't like something, I try my best to change it. And stop standing outside of Old Lucy's, it's weird and Abby has enough stress." Magnes casually notes, even though he was doing exactly-the-same-thing-at-the-same-time. He's out, and casually waves back before he simply wooshes into the air.


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