Princess Fucking Danger

this is my buddy’s new rp group, she’d love to have any of you if yr interested!

“I a biology professor” he answered as he looked at her, “I guess so but i am thinking that we have different definitions of the term company at this moment”

“No way, really?!  I’da thought you were seriously, like, a grad student.  That’s amazing!”  He did seem a lot younger than almost every professor Adrian remembered from college, but there was one she really liked who was only in her early 30′s.  It was still impressive.

“How do you mean?”  She cocked her head. “Like, I know a business card in and of itself isn’t ‘company’.  Duh-doy.”  Adrian lifted her hands to signed the air quotes and then giggled at the thought of how she’d interpreted what he had said, though she did figure she wasn’t understanding what he meant by that.  “I was tryna ask if someone offered to hang with you.  Well... someone other than me.”

Dropping her planner on the table in front of her, Constance fished a pen out of her purse, and started flipping pages. Her next event, an obnoxiously expensive baby shower, was in less than two months – but she had barely started, only managing to secure a color scheme and a few ideas for the menu. In the margins of the page, she wrote down a few names for caterers that she was used to working with, putting stars by the ones she thought would work best. It was all a matter of availability, but if she did this right, she could still make it look like she dedicated all her time to it, when she really had been putting it on the back burner to focus on the weddings she had lined up. Weddings were her main source of income, bringing in the most money – that she desperately needed right now, if she was going to keep the lights on at her house and afford to rebuild her life.

If she weren’t so tired, and moody, she would have felt bad about her choice in establishment. She clearly wasn’t the target demographic for these women – a tragically straight young woman, who was working at one of the tables – but she figured if she left a big enough tip with her drinks, and gave a few bills to the dancers, they wouldn’t hunt her down later for taking up space. When someone approached the table, stealing her attention, she had been making a list of decorations she wanted to look into. “Thank you,” she said automatically, taking the offered menu in her hands, letting her pen drop on the book in front of her. Because she hadn’t been here before, she flipped through the drink list, humming to herself as the woman spoke. “I’ll pass on the girl,” she said absently, shoving a few loose hairs back from her face, where they had fallen out of her bun. “Are the mozzarella sticks good?” she asked a moment later, closing the menu and offering it back. “I’ll take ‘em if they are – and a rum and coke, please. Heavy on the rum, no ice.”

Despite her awful mood, she let a smile slip onto her features, refusing to take her burdens out on the young woman standing in front of her. Having worked as a waitress before, she knew the pain of the ‘bad day’ customers that would come in, wanting to share their misery with everyone around them. Even if misery did love company, she was hesitant to push hers onto other people. “A glass of ice water would be great, too,” she added before the other could walk off with her order.

“Hah, well I mean, they’re nothing to write home about, but how hard is it to fuck up mozzarella sticks?”  God only knew when the last time the friar oil had been changed, because despite Body Shot’s ritzy outward appearance and it’s fancy-ass location, the point behind the scenes was to pass the health inspection, rather than, say, getting the highest score possible, or some shit. This never stopped Adrian from eating the food when she was hungry at work, which really only happened on the rare occasion when she’d actually chosen to take her appetite-enhancing anti depressant the night before - obviously this was something she was supposed to take regularly but never did, opting instead to fill it every month anyway and collect it in a bottle with a biotin supplement label. 

“ ‘Course.”  A gesture and a nod at the busboy who was already in the process of eying down her, and possibly also the patron, from halfway across the bar procured them a glass of ice water in a couple seconds without Adrian even having to move.  

“Hey, Girl...”  The lady seemed cool enough to take what Adrian had to say without phoning the manager, though in her experience so far, everyone was ‘cool’ enough so far to handle the ‘brutal honesty’ of a cocktail waitress who was depending on their tip.  “... I’m not about to turn away business, but there are a ton of other bars around here, you know... bars where all this, like, leering isn’t as, you know... acceptable.”  

This was great, just great. First time in a foreign country, all of his belongings in two suitcases and a carry-on and he couldn’t figure out the international calling thing to let Holly know he had arrived. Levi looked around and approached a stranger. “It might be biscuits to a bear, but have you got a phone I can borrow?”

Despite her head being down and the hood of her sweatshirt mostly obscuring her face, Adrian apparently seemed approachable enough, at least for this particular stranger, which was cool!  If she was being honest, Adrian wanted to talk to someone.  It was actually this, and not any real shortage of nail polish, eyeliner, or whatever-the-hell else she'd buy and then throw in her dopp kit that had compelled her to get off her ass and go check out how fancy Montreal’s Sephora store was compared to Time’s Square’s ((Adrian is from NYC)).  

Until she stopped to take her phone out for navigation, Adrian had been walking briskly with her hood up and her arms wrapped tightly around herself in a protective manner, clutching shut her unzipped hoodie and likely appearing to be in some kind of concerning hurry.  She decided to play this up, and ducked into a corner, prompting the guy to follow.  “Yeah...”  She handed over the prepaid tracfone she’d bought to avoid racking up hundreds of dollars in out-of-country charges and continued nervously glancing around, as if someone was after her (

The weather was brisk, the sky clear for once. Which made Marcus a little bitter seeing as he had several errands to run in the afternoon. He wasn’t in a hurry by any means, it just needed to get done. Preferably today. Stepping out of his truck, Marcus reached his hand down his back pocket, fishing out his wallet to feed the meter. And of course, the meter had to be one of the last coin-fed ones in Montreal. It was as if the ridiculous device was laughing in his face, seeing as there was no coin in sight resting in his wallet. Usually he had at least a couple of quarters scrambling around somewhere, but after using most of them for leisure tips and toll fees during his trip over the weekend he was now left cash-less. “Hey, I hate to be that guy. But do you got some cash to spare? I’ll pay you back” Directing the words to the first person walking by, his voice was gentle, apologetic even, as he asked for the favor.

For a panhandler, this guy was very handsome - so handsome, in fact, that he made Adrian hot and flustered just by talking to her, even though there was the only other person in their immediate vicinity.   “Awe... “  She cooed some sympathy and ran her hands through her hair nervously; this combined with the burning sensation she felt in her cheeks likely made her seem embarrassed.  Ad considering how she was suddenly reflexively reacting to some guy - a panhandler, for fuck’s sake - like a 7th grader meeting the Teen Beat cover boy she had plastered all over her bedroom wall, she actually was starting to feel embarrassed.  What the hell?

Adrian patted around her torso, as if there were pockets sewn in throughout her sweatshirt that might contain a wallet, or some shit.  After a second or two, she hit the strap of her practical cross-body purse and began rummaging for the bottom of it.  There was plenty of change, but there was more in her waist apron, so she pretended to kick herself about it.  “No!  Shit!  I’m so sorry...”

 “I took a break from reading and grading papers” he said with a sigh, “but i don’t mind company though. Am sorry, i don’t follow your question about finding something?” 

“I see - sounds tedious... what grade you teach?”  Everything about Adrian’s cadence when she spoke was contrived - it was her ‘work voice’.  Still.  That not to say she sounded contrived, but if she wasn’t ‘putting on a performance’, so to speak, Adrian naturally tended to sound a little more deadpan, and she definitely spoke in a lower register.  From the way she spoke now, one would think she was a perky, bubbly person, friendly and so interested in this stranger she’d chatted up in a bar that it was making her excited.  “Or are you a student teacher?  Or a TA?”

This was probably a tad misleading, to be sure, but it was nothing outside of the ‘ordinary’; most people poured a different kind of dressing on their personalities when they were fishing for hookups - it’s not like she owed this guy the truth about anything, nor did he owe her.  Even so, Adrian prodded again about whatever he’d just shoved into his pocket with an interest that was only halfway feigned, if only to maintain the friendly chatter.   “Just, in terms of... you know, in terms of company... did you find something?  Someone?  Right there?”   She took another glance at his pocket and smirked.

Jason put the paper with the number in it, in his pocket. He wanted to rip the paper but did not want to at the same time, “It’s, i don’t mind at all to be honest” he smiled, “it looks like the bar is kinda of empty today”

It worked!  The guy didn’t give her any indication that she should fuck off, and he even got rid of the tiny bit of paper that he’d been paying attention to before Adrian had interrupted.  “You left your apartment looking for more than just some Liquid Escape, huh?  Same here.  I wanted company.”

  Jason looked at the paper with the number he had gotten debating if he should call it or not. Jason was lost in thought but came back to reality ,“sorry, am i in the way?” he asked making sure that his chair was not blocking anyone else in the bar.

“Not at all, Baby.”  Shit.  Adrian was still in ‘work-mode’, using a typical strip club term of endearment on a perfect stranger in a regular bar, with a baby-voiced cadence to match the suggestive way she’d referred to this stranger; a guy who Adrian was squeezing past from behind, and making no effort to not brush the whole front of herself against his back.  At least she hadn’t called him ‘Sugar’, which was Adrian’s actual ‘favorite’ pet name for her patrons at Body Shots... it would’ve been a little more embarrassing.  

“I was just gonna...”  Once she’d made it to his other side,she hopped up on the bar stool directly next to his, crossing her legs and turning her whole pelvis towards the stranger, doing her best to procure at least some of his attention. .  “... just gonna sit here, if that’s okay.”  

“Company tends to find me whether I’m looking for it or not. Hence, you being here.” They remarked, glancing over the girl before looking away. They felt as if they were intruding on a moment and wondered if they should leave. The girl looked like she was in a terrible state but Victoria was much to reserved to ever mention that to her. 

“Hm... what’s weird is, I feel like I’ve been here before...”  Adrian took another look around, at the drippy, colorless woods and the equally colorless overcast sky, at the massive tree trunk she sat on, which somehow also seemed unsaturated in it’s brown hue, and then back at the long-haired, doe-eyed lady; Adrian experienced all this recently, down to the exact position she was in, with one foot upturned in her lap ((like this, except her other foot is on the ground - obviously, ‘cause she’d topple off the trunk if she were actually sitting like the girl in the picture)), which likely looked more awkward than comfortable - Adrian’s flexibility permitted her often ‘contortionist’ manner of sitting, as her grandpa used to often used to describe it. “... and so were you.”

She delicately picked up the mirror compact and rested it in her lap, on top of her foot before looking back at the stranger, animating her voice and her expression a little so she’d seem warmer than deadpan.  “Know what it was?”  She gave a slight pause, but not one that allowed enough time for the other to interject.  “It was my dream last night.”  

The dream wasn’t eventful, but it had recreated itself - which was something Adrian only noticed once the element of the other person had manifested at the right distance.  Likely a coincidence, sure, but was a just a little bit unsettling.

Instead of taking a completely conspicuous line up her nose off the mirror she held, Adrian simply licked her pinkie and messed one of them up, sticking her finger in her mouth to get a taste of what she’d sat down for.  “Want me to fuck off?”