Grisly Bar
Worn wooden floors stained with ages of spilled drinks (and worse), creak under the feet of patrons as they enter the dark, disordered room. Though dust has settled over a lot of the establishment, making it appear abandoned, the flow of customers would speak differently. Dirty glasses, some with sticky yellow patches in the bottom where beer or scotch has been allowed to dry, stand on one end of the bar. Several of the windows have been bricked up to prevent vandalism, but create a great fire-hazard. There is a tarnished mirror on the wall behind the bar with a chipped and fading Art Nouveau nymph painted across the bottom.
Mellie hasn't actually been out this way before, so it's with some curiosity that she steps into the dive bar. There's also some curiosity as to whether or not the guys in dive bars are more inclined than those in upscale bars to buy an underage girl drinks in the hopes she might consider sleeping with them. It doesn't seem to be horribly busy in here tonight, which doesn't exactly help her chances any - and only improves those chances of being caught. Still, nothing ventured, nothing gained. So, with some caution, she begins a circuit of the room, dark gaze scanning the crowd, looking for a mark.
Will men in dive bars buy underage girls in the hopes of sleeping with them? Probably. Wit will buy her one just for the Hell of it. As such, he's already here, sitting at the bar. Thankfully this time he hasn't decided to fill out any college applications — he'd probably have his ass beaten in this joint. Instead, he's nursing a bottle of Guinness, bought with his fake ID. In front of him is a plate of nachos with the works. As far as bar food goes, there are no cigarette ashes or hair clumps in it and it doesn't look totally detestable. Still, most of it is untouched. Loss of appetite is just one of those pesky side effects of habitual cocaine usage though.
A few of the skeezier guys are considered in passing, a few even given a smile or two as she eyes them. And she's not completely lacking for attention in return either, but nothing seems to be enticing her just yet. Her circuit doesn't take her long to reach Wit, pausing as she recognizes him and giving up the hunt to veer over in a bee-line for him. Mellie drops on to the stool next to him, offering a wry grin. She props an elbow up onto the bar, facing mostly out into the room so that she can lean back against the sticky surface, turned about a quarter of the way inwards towards him. "So, what's a gal gotta do to get a drink around here," she speaks up in a lighter tone than has been her norm recently.
"Well, I could take you into the bathroom and show you," Wit responds, without missing a beat before he grins at Mellie. He waves the bartender over and nods to him. "Whatever the lady here wants, put it on my tab. I'll pay when I leave." He pushes the nachos towards Mellie and takes another sip of his own beer, smiling at her. "What brings you out and about? This is a little dangerous for you. Then again, I guess you are into danger all that sort of thing. Still…" Wit scans the bar momentarily, eyes stopping on a few of the more gruff, potentially violent patrons. "You shouldn't come to places like this alone." Then he grins. "I know what you're going to say next, eh? 'Now I'm not alone.'"
Mellie laughs at that suggestive comment, craning around at the bartender comes over to order a 7 and 7. She doesn't quite entirely face the barkeep, lest their relative combined youth call this order into question. "You have a tab. That's handy," she replies, leaning in to examine the nachos before extracting one fee from the plate. They don't look deadly, at least. Straightening back up, she looks over at him, grin gone a bit wry again. "Actually, I was going to say I can handle myself, but yours is more clever, so lets go with that." She pauses a moment to eat the nacho, before shrugging and giving the question a little more thought. "I guess I was curious. What, you come here often?"
Wit grins at Mellie and raises his shoulders in a shrug. "What can I say? When I'm bored, I drink." Amongst other things. He reaches out to drape an arm across the back of Mellie's seat rather casually, the other hand reaching up to run his fingers through his hair. "I come here when I feel like it. It's been a while, so I guess it's just the strings of fate weaving us together, my dear." He winks at the girl sitting next to him and then takes one of the nachos for himself. He must not have ordered them too long before she walked in, because they're still fairly warm. "I don't think these guys care too much about if a woman can handle herself or not. In fact, most of them probably like a girl with some fight in her." He frowns after saying that, then crams his mouth full of chip.
"I don't need to be bored…" To drink, is the unspoken part of that sentence. "Though I guess that's as good a reason as any." The arm is noticed with a brief flick of her eyes, but she doesn't protest the casual gesture. "Seems like it must be fate, yeah. For good or bad, anyway." She grins wryly at that, reaching over to snag another of the nachos once he's taken his. It doesn't get eaten right away though, as she winds up studying it while considering his words of wisdom. "I've been doing this awhile. You really don't need to worry about me," she assures him, not giving the threat too much credence. Making time with vampires has kind of led to a natural underestimation of the more generic threat of the human male.
Wit gives Mellie a skeptical look as she states she's been doing it a while and he doesn't need to worry. "Whatever you say." Inside, he knows he's still going to worry. And he's already starting on it. He finishes off his beer in time for the waiter to come back with Mellie's drink, where upon he promptly orders another one. "Careful there, cupcake. Your liver is going to be the color of a canary by the time you're twenty if you keep drinking like that." It's said mostly in jest, Wit grinning as he says it. He takes another nacho himself and chews it up thoughtfully before he looks towards the jukebox and lets out a slightly contemplative sigh. His gaze returns to Mellie and he pushes the nachos towards her once more, leaning over the bar a little bit on his elbows. "Tell me what you've been up to since we last spoke. If you could call it that. I'm still not sure what I call that."
Mellie meets the skeptical look with a pointed and stubborn one of her own. He's just lucky he's not related, or he'd no doubt be getting an ear-full. As it is, she just leaves it at that, unwilling to yield but not wanting to argue about it either. She picks up her drink as it comes, taking a sip of it. "I sort of figure drinking myself to death is way down there on the list of risks," she notes lightly, taking a second sip before she sets the drink down. "Yeah, I don't know what I call that either," she admits thoughtfully as she absently takes another nacho. "But it was nice." She shrugs simply with that, before returning to the actual question. "Working. Drinking. Always in that order. I actually had a pretty good day today, all things considered. Managed to get along with my sister for a whole five minutes, and got invited to what I'm thinking will be some very interesting parties." There's a reminiscent smile with that. "What about you?"
"Nothing. I've been up to bloody nothing. Sending out applications, really. Chatting to my brother online." Wit lets out a sigh. "At the risk of sounding like a wanker, my life has been a great big nothing lately." He shrugs his shoulders very briefly before glancing towards Mellie's midsection. He laughs afterward and shakes his head, returning his gaze to hers. "I've heard that cirrhosis of the liver isn't a pleasant way to go, doll. Just keep in mind. I should take you to bloody Ireland someday. You'd love it there. Pubs as far as the eye can see!" The young man grins at her before he gets down from his bar stool and leans in to her. "Five whole minutes? You do deserve a drink. Order whatever you want… I'll pay when we go to leave. Err, when I do." Because clearly he wasn't debating taking her home with him. Wit shifty eyes and then smiles at Mellie, reaching out to give her a brief pat on the knee. "Be right back."
"Well, maybe we should do something about that then," Mellie suggests with a grin and a shrug in return. She's got nothing more than that though, not planning these things much in advance. "Then again, the sort of not-nothing I've been ending up in the middle of lately, I don't know if you'd really want to get dragged down with me." There's a touch of the old mopeyness, but she fights it back quickly, taking another sip of her drink. "Ireland? Man, I've never even been out of the state. Ireland would be awesome. So the stereotypes are true then? My kind of people." She watches him clambering down from his stool, her eyebrows arching slightly. "I know. It was really hard," she melodramas, of trying to get along with her sister. She brightens at the offer to order what she wants, though there's also some curiosity as to what it is he's up to. "Sure thing." She picks up her current drink to work in finishing it - no point nursing it if they've got an open tab running.
After some very lengthy browsing and careful selection at the jukebox, Wit comes back five dollars later and with an entire repetoire of songs lined up. The first that starts to play is the moody "Love You To Death" by Type O Negative. He takes a place back on his bar stool and wipes at his nose absently before looking back towards Mellie. "The stereotypes are true. They'll get angry if you say anything. It's like me and my tea, I guess. Which if you ever tell anyone about, I'll have to spank you for." He waggles a finger at her before leaning back in his seat, watching the other people in the bar idly. "Family still giving you a hard time, then? It won't be like that forever, you know. Not if you run far enough away at least." Wit grins and winks at Mellie before his eyes rove over towards one of the pool tables near the back. "We traveled a lot when I was younger. I guess that's what started it all. It's relaxing being in a place where no one knows your name most of the time. Or your real name. No expectations to live up to." Wit lets out a wistful sigh before shrugging his shoulders as his beer comes. "By the way, not sure if I can get drug down any further. Or at least the way my family sees it." He winks in her direction as he takes the cap of his beer off, taking a hearty drink.
"There's that taken care of," Mellie notes with a grin, as he returns from the jukebox, the song selection getting a little laugh. "And hey. I'll take the tea to my grave. Just not literally. At least you didn't seem to get too angry." Since he brought it up, she considers it fair game for teasing. To the matter of her family, she heaves a weary sigh, shrugging her shoulders almost like she's deflating. "It's complicated. But I didn't really have to run all that far for them to stop looking. But now … things are a bit different. I'm not so sure how I feel about being lost right now." Realizing she's getting far too serious and sincere, she shakes that off with a shrug, grin returning. "But hey, whatever. I never did try ditching the name. Maybe I'll try that next time." She tips back the last of her first drink, indicated to the bartender for another. Cirrhosis shlirrhosis. "Then I guess we have that in common," she notes more lightly, as to familial views on hitting bottom.
Wit listens to Mellie for a moment as he nurses his beer, not quite as intent on drinking until his liver hits the floor. He puts his beer back down on the bar top and reaches out, putting a somewhat chilly hand on Mellie's knee. "Being lost isn't always a good thing. But for brief periods of time, it's excellent." He laughs very quietly at her last statement, leaning his head back so that his throat is exposed for a brief moment. "We have plenty in common. Not a lot of is really happy, but most of life kind of sucks, doesn't it?" Wit asks with the quietest of laughs. "I try not to dwell on it. If I did, I'd slit my fuckin' wrists. Besides, life is what you make it. So you should make it fun. Or at least an alcohol-blurred series of events, if you like."
"I guess it's just confusing when you hit that point where you want to be lost, but you don't. If that even makes any sense." Mellie isn't sure whether or not it does, but she opts not to linger on trying to find better words to fit. "Yeah, here's to life sucking," she agrees, raising her glass in a mock-toast. "But - at least it's something, knowing someone else gets it," she grants. "And it is what you make it, you're right. It's much better to have fun than sit around crying about it all. Life's unfair. Whatever. I'm just going to keep drinking and - and having fun until that doesn't even matter anymore," she resolves, changing her word choice mid-way through. Finally, she glances down at the hand on her knee, pointing out with a wry grin, "Your hand is cold." It's an observation rather than a complaint.
The dark-haired youth raises his beer in a toast to Mellie just as the heavy metal song ends and the strains of Bela Lugosi's Dead by Bauhaus starts up. This draws a few strange looks from other bar patrons before Wit breaks into a rogue-ish grin. "I love doing that. They never expect it, y'know? They think you're going to play Molly Hatchet or maybe some Alabama, and instead you play that." He winks at her before noticing a look that he's getting from a particularly large biker, and smirking at the man. Wit can't help but laugh at her statement, shaking his head. "There are somethings in life you may want to be sober to enjoy. That's just… you know, a theory. You don't have to take it to heart or anything." When Mellie comments upon the cool flesh of Wit's hand, he gives a brief nod. "The beer tends to do that. The rest of me is warm. I can show you!"
"So you're allowed to mess with them and I have to be on my best behaviour just in case?" Mellie protests, though his psychological experiment does warrant an amused laugh. The biker gets a winning smile from her before she returns her attention to Wit. "Hmm. Well, I seem to do all right enjoying things drunk, but I suppose I could allow that there might be some things out there that are better sober. Maybe." She takes a sip of her refreshed drink as it comes, though at least she isn't knocking it back quite as quick as the first. She arches an eyebrow, considering that comment of his. "Could you now." It's not quite a question, and not quite not a question. Perhaps a bit of an amused challenge, really.
"Yes, you have to be on your best behavior just in case we need to suddenly run out of here. Do you run fast?" Wit asks in a pseudoserious manner before he reaches out to grab one of the going-cold nachos and put it into his mouth, nibbling at it before he leans in closer to Mellie, kneeling in his bar stool in a nigh on impossible manner. "Do you know what we should do? The next time there's one of those fancy benefits for charity, I should take you. As my date. It'll be like Pretty Woman, only you're not a streetwalker. And they have open bars." He knocks back his own beer rather quickly before licking his lips and regarding Mellie with a wink. "I could, but that'd look bad. Me buying you all this alcohol and then trying to shag you. Oi! I'm only that kind of boy to girls I don't actually like."
"In these heels? Are you kidding?" Mellie deadpans in reply. "Guess I'd better just hope he won't hit a girl." She looks over at him sidelong, unable to keep from chuckling at his pose on the bar stool. "You're going to fall off," she remarks without a great deal of concern. Still, she stops worrying about gravity long enough to hear out his proposal, looking both amused and intrigued. "I'm not exactly Julia Roberts. I don't know how good I'd clean up," she warns him. "And yeah. While certainly loving family members may consider me as much, I'm not actually a whore." There's more annoyance at the family member than the insinuation though. He gets another sidelong grin for his protest. "You were the one who suggested it," she notes lightly. "Anyway, I don't mind the cold." One could even say she's used to it.
Wit can't help but laugh very quietly at Mellie's words, reaching out to squeeze her shoulder. Miraculously he doesn't fall off the stool. "I guess if we have to run I'll just pick you up over my shoulder like a caveman and run with you. The car is outside though. I don't think they'd have too much time to do anything but shake their collective fist and call us rotten kids." Wit finally sits down in the chair and gets a little more comfortable as he scans the bar once more. The jukebox switches from Bauhaus to Deep Purple. A few of the bikers seem relatively satisfied with the change, making Wit let out a deep exhale. "You're not a whore, no. If you were a whore, well…" He trails off there. There are a lot of specifics he could go into, a lot of instances, but in the end… he'd rather just not take the risk of offending her or being too crass. He laughs at her final statement and grins. "I'm sure you don't mind the cold… so, if we ever do intend to get intimiate, should I take a bath in a tub of ice first?" Wit teases lightly.
"I like that you went with caveman instead of fireman," Mellie notes, laughing a bit at that and shaking her head at him. "But okay. So we have a plan then. Seems almost a shame to waste it by not having to use it now." She glances over at the room at large and then down to her fresh drink. "Maybe once I'm done this," she decides, because, really, that would also be a waste to have to run out on a good drink. She looks back to him then, eyebrow arched as he just trails off that interesting sentence beginning. "Well, if I were a whore, you'd have to do more than just buy me drinks," she points out with a smirk, taking a sip from the aforementioned drink. Leaning against the bar, she looks over at him, considering that offer (albeit not entirely seriously). "It probably wouldn't hurt your chances, but without the biting, we might as well just try something different," she decides in jest.
"Do you ever sleep with actual living guys, anyhow?" Wit asks, more out of curiosity. There's no real accusation in his tone, but sometimes a guy just needs to know if he has a chance or not. He grins anyways at Mellie and hops down from his stool, seeming a bit antsy for one reason or another. May have something to do with the tiny fleck of white by his right nostril. He shifts his weight from foot to foot for a few moments before he shrugs his shoulders al ittle bit. "I've never paid money for sex before, and I'm not going to start now. I guess there are different facets to that, you know? What does it say about girls who have been with me just because I have money? But that's a debate I don't want to get into."
"Not too often, but … sometimes," Mellie replies with a casual shrug. "I think I'm probably too freaky for most of them though," is added with an amused laugh. She does rather revel in the whole 'spirit of the night' thing she's put together for herself. To say nothing about some of the tricks she's learned, but those aren't really the sort of thing to drop into casual conversation. She glances over at him as he hops down from the stool, just watching with some idle curiosity as she can't help but notice the antsiness. "I definitely wasn't suggesting you should start now." But she does consider his point about girls who will sleep with a rich guy - not that her past is all that much better. "Yeah, you're probably better off not getting into that. I mean, you got to sleep with them and keep your money, so it sounds like you made out okay on that deal," she points out pragmatically.
Wit laughs a little bit and leans in, hugging Mellie with one arm. He reaches into his pocket and motions the bartender over as soon as he extracts his wallet. From within, a fifty dollar bill is extracted and handed over to the bartender. "Keep the change, smitty." Wit says before reaching up to wipe his nose, grinning at Mellie. "I think I'm about to get out of here. One can only handle so much stale cigarette smoke polluting their lungs. Would you like a ride home, or wherever it is that you'd rather go?" He asks, shrugging his shoulders at her statement about money. "Well, I know men that profess if they even spend money on a girl during a date, that girl is a whore and owes them something. Of course, those men are mostly in jail." He leans in and whispers, "Some of them are probably in this bar."
Mellie is at least not quite so tense to this hug as she was the last time, though the small, familiar gesture still is rather foreign to her, and she winds up rolling her eyes a bit without really meaning it. The fifty is noticed but uncommented upon for the moment as she brings her gaze back up to Wit, considering his offer. "Yeah, I guess I wouldn't mind a ride," she decides with a little smile, making sure to toss back the rest of her drink first. Waste not, want not. "I don't even notice the smoke anymore, to be honest." A side-effect of working and spending most of her free time in bars. Her empty glass is set down on the bar and she slips carefully from her stool, just a little tipsy after downing the two drinks in short order. "Yeah, well, guys can think that all they want. Then again, maybe that explains why I don't go on a lot of dates." Does it make you more or less of a whore if you just give it up for nothing, and don't give it up for the skeezes who buy you drinks?
