Scenario Entitled: The Start Of A Beautiful... SomethingCharacters:
Gareth, new gym-owner.
Maxim, new bar-owner.
Location: The Fallen Angel, a seedy west-side bar.
Date: Tiew's Day, Honorius 29th, 106 P.A.
Gareth scuffs his boots at the door, a customary measure he seems to hang onto despite the current surroundings. He saunters in, puffing up his ego with each tromping step into the place.
Maxim is at the 'red circle' door, locking it with a large iron key from a small jangling ring. He tucks said ring into his back pocket, and turns to survey the room at large. A gang of ragged rowdies takes up one corner, arguing loudly, and making occasional grabs for the skimpily clad barmaidens.
Gareth maneuvers over to the bar and lowers himself slowly onto a free barstool. He rasps an order for a Vodka once he's firmly stabilized on his seat.
The waitress, flaunting half her tush in a short short gauzy skirt, treads back to the bar with the order, only to be stopped by Maxim, who's apparently spotted Gareth. He takes the tumbler of clear liquid himself, and a long necked dark bottle for himself, and heads over.
Gareth broods over his table like a real macho-tough guy. Pulling out all the stops in a plainly visible attempt to look the part.
Maxim clunks Gareth's drink down in front of the large man, the liquid swirling around noisomely. Then he pulls a chair out while saying, "Can I join you, man?" in his darkling voice.
Gareth looks up, big neanderthal brow unable to shadow his eyes any longer. He seems faintly surprised by Maxim's presence, "Aye, thought tha girl wit tha tons'o buns wuz servin..." he reaches forward and engulfs his glass in one of his hands, draggin it slowly across the tabletop towards him.
Maxim shrugs carelessly and seats himself in a Chair of Antler Doom. "I'll send her over again later, if you want," he says in a negligent drawl, "though just a warning: touching that ass is like an indirect handshake with everyone else in this dive. Except myself of course." With that, he tips back his bottle, taking a long gulp while extending his other gloved hand to Gareth.
Gareth stares at that hand for a few seconds, he lets out a tiny cluck, probably the beginnings of a low chuckle cut off in the prime of its life. He looks at the hand skeptically, as if a tiny snake may be lurking just beyond it, snuggled inside the confines of his sleeves. "Pr'aps..." He moves his hand forward to complete the shake while he utters, "Gar-ath..."
Maxim's handshake is a loose but uncomprimising action, taking Gareth's hand where he wants it to go. Up! Down! Now get the fuck away! He lays that forearm across the table's edge and takes another pull from his bottle, a dark blue tinted number in which the liquid seems to be clear, under the right light.
Gareth moves his wrung hand back across the table a bit, containing his displeasure at being manhandled and offering a quirky smile. His eyes sweep over Maxim's arm and tip-toe up to where his shoulder meets the neck. Gareth lifts his Vodka up to his lips and slowly sips at the liquid as it burns his taste buds and throat, letting the alcohol take the scenic route down to his gullet.
The liquid has that familiar tint of dry vapor as it slops down your throat, tingling as it heats up the contact tissues like a furnace. It's vodka, and surprisingly good! Pure, and all that nasty stuff. Maxim lets a thin-lipped smile gloss over his semi-friendly expression. "You're the big dude who owns the new gym up West Wallside," he remarks.
Gareth licks the rim of the glass and sets it down to the table-top, the vodka's relentless presence still stinging the sides of his tongue. He leans back a bit on his strange little seat and eases himself into a horrible posture, "Aye, S'truth. I kin see my precognitive advertisin's goin ta good use." he thumbs the side of his nose a few times, "An you seem ta be tha owner o' this fine 'stablishment." he looks around, focusing on nothing in particular, "Seems a tad diff'rent."
Maxim's smile grows lopsided, and he leans in conspiratorially, saying, "Yes.. fuck yes. I saw this boarded-up oasis of sin and said to myself, 'So this is why that shithole The Succubus was doing so grandly. People had mistaken /that/ for the height of dangerous, illicit drinking entertainment. So I bought it up, tore down the cobwebs, but only," he pauses as if this were an important point, "the uninhabited ones, and slopped a few coats of nastiness on. But that's it. Not going to throw anymore money away on this fire trap. It'll serve its purpose."
Gareth chuckles a bit involuntarily at Maxim's whole regard for /the/ undisputed drinking hole in town. Sounds from his throat threaten to escape their fleshy containment as he listens further. "Tha Succ's certainly a..." and he widens his eyes in melodramatic flair, "Dangerous place, nuthin but panzies quite pr'pared ta wet their kit when trouble 'its." He squints his eyes a bit, "Aye, this place is certin-ly set in tha right district fer yer purposes...if gettin set on fire is yer plan."
Maxim looks at him for an overlong second, then tips the bottle back once more, taking half of the remaining liquid with him. When he sets it back down, his eyes on Gareth have narrowed in thoughtful esteem. "Maybe later in the fall season," he promises easily. "I've no intention of growing attached to the place." He slouches in a sprawl of long limbs, getting comfortable if that's possible, and says passingly, "It's interesting that you've ordered our vodka.. as I recall, you had put in an irate complaint a few nights ago about that particular drink."
Gareth raises a hairy brow and purses his lips thoughtfully. He props up a foot onto one of his knees, which begins to tap in a slight rythm. "Aye, 'ad a young filly wit me tha night. We ordered drinks ta git inna mood. I gots me Whiskey, she gots 'er Vodka." he winks, "Tho it wazn no Vodka, I kin tells ya tha, S'truth. An she was a reaalll Rookie at tha whole drinkin game, jus't thrust back tha bleedin thing in two gulps." a smirk plasters itself on his face. "Tear's be streamin down 'er cheeks at the load. An I took a wee sniff o' tha glass she 'ad...Close ta paint thinner I swear. T'wud all be fine n' dandy if i'd been one o' tha other lasses I 'ang wit, but she be a different class if'n ya git me smelly-ass drift."
Maxim has been rolling his bottle back and forth in his gloved palms, only looking half-interested, when 'Rookie' is mentioned. A subtle change ripples through his posture: head drops a couple of inches and turns away, while the gaze sticks to Gareth like taffy; bottle's rolling jerks to a stop, sloshing the spiralling liquid up the neck, some of it dribbling out (it's clear, by gum); the smile dies on his face ever so slightly. Not so subtle if you're looking for it, one guesses, but he's back into his original pose by the time the sentence is over with. "Ahhh, I see. You've got friends in high places, then?" he inquires softly.
Gareth lets out a 'phhhtp' horse-sounding noise, and scrunches up his face into a grotesque looking smirk. "Ya make it sound like I'm prac-tic-ally in bed wit tha bloody Dean o' tha Academy, S'truth. More like chums with some, An I 'ave tha occasional chat with tha silly folk playin Lord o' tha land...whut...whut the 'ell iz yer name?"
Maxim leans back in his chair, draining the rest of the bottle. Gareth's bloody fine sense of smell might detect a dreadfully familiar scent in the fumes now around the round table. Especially when Maxim speaks. "Maximillan Corsuca, Gareth. And believe it or not, you have a remarkable and unique position among the West-End punks, to have the ear, even if only occasionally, of the city leaders. Could be why your gym was spiffed up so quickly, eh?" His smile is disarmingly sincere for once.
Gareth feels a bit uneasy in front of Maxim's smile, but he brushes the feeling away hastily with a slight flex of his pecs. He's not about to be taken in by a well-manicured smile, he tells himself anywho. "Aye, cud be any numba o' reasons why I be on me feet. P'raps its b'caz I be tha right friggin noggin-stompin freak o' tha quadrant, n'they jus wanna keep me from settlin duwn round where they live." He grins toothily and shrugs finally in that punkish annoying way, "The bloody three keep ta themselves mostly, when they ain't gettin locked away and kidnapped, so me ear only gets tickled once inna blue moon ye see."
Maxim sets the label-free bottle down with a clunk, and the tons-o-buns bar wench comes by to snag the empties. His glance flickers down to her easily revealed naughty bits, and his smile turns contemptuous. Hrm. Maybe he's a 'man's man'. "Not what I heard," he remarks after her passing. "There /was/ a few days of jabber about the severe ass-kicking that occured in your gym just a fortnight ago. The female councilwoman has been spotted at your business quite often, in fact." Some of his teeth are showing in his self-assured grin, all sorts of presumptions flitting about.
Gareth rears back his head, letting out a husky chuckle. He cranes his head back around floppily and brings his hands over his lap where they clasp together. His knee by this time has picked up its pace. He starts into his banter in a 'lemme-just-say-this' sort of demeanor, "She comes by from time ta time ta work them...anatomical parts o' hers. She's quite a draw fer people...fer me busy-ness. As fer tha ass-kickin...Never 'ave I been quite so 'appy ta excert meself in sucha manner. I think it be everyblokes duty ta romp 'round wit someone onna mat from time'ta time. But rumors are rumors aye? Who kin say why she keeps comin back ta brighten tha place?" his eyes slide, side to side, his mouth puckered in a kissing shape.
Maxim's visage seems to darken some as Gareth speaks in such familiar, lurid terms. His visible hand twitches slightly, and his eyes on him have gone ferally intent. But his voice is normal enough as he remarks, "I can see that.. I can see how celebrity presence could draw the clientele in. Maybe she'll find the time to grace my own establishment once and a while. For business-purposes." He stands up abruptly, pushing the chair out with the scraping of wood on cement.
Gareth blinks a bit, the sound of the chair scraping raising the hairs on the back of his neck. He cocks his head a bit to the side, like a dog picking up an odd pitch. The pursed lips are gone, instead they press together in a rather bland expression. He leans forward in his chair a bit, "P'raps I kin git 'er ear again an 'aul 'er down fer another glass 'o whamo juice." he cocks a brow. "Thou ta be sure she's a tad bit wary o' tha place, memories a tad sharp o' tha wobbly night."
Maxim doesn't turn around, although his head does angle down again when Gareth confirms the earlier hint that she did in fact come here before. As he goes, a slight chuckle shakes his shoulders and his speech. "You shouldn't be worried about that. If that 'whamo juice' is what I think it was, she likely wouldn't even know, much less remember, what her name was at the time." He jerks his head to the regular barmaid, who hastily wiggles her way over to practically drape over Gareth's shoulder while seeing to his drinkly needs.
Gareth grimaces a bit, despite the floppily-doppilies that brush against his shoulder. He rises, buffeting the poor girl away slightly as he gets out his credstick and pays his tab.
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