Phillip:
The sea-green hues stayed on hers as she spoke, but upon her first statement, his eyebrows both raised curiously. Most wouldn’t have the confidence to say such a thing. “I was afraid it would be too obvious - what would people insinuate if my attention on you never wavered?” He pointed out, trying to tease her back a bit. “Perhaps I should - but how do you know I don’t?”
He left his question open ended for a moment, before leaning in towards her ear. He was constantly speaking in questions. It was part of what made Phillip - the riddles, the questions, the intrigue… the mystery. He answered nearly anything anyone would ask, he would not shy away from the question, but hardly ever would he give a clear answer. It was how he kept up conversations, when he first began performing, and it just became a habit. He even found it slipping into his conversations in his day to day life, and he was sure it was infuriating during a normal conversation. “Those urges, as you call them, could easily come out somewhere less… crowded.”
He leaned back just in time for the bartender to place his drink on the bar, and he lifted the glass to take a sip. She wanted something from him, he assumed - she wasn’t spewing on about his music, but she was clearly interested. And that had to mean something. At her question, he paused and swallowed the liquid in his mouth, quickly determining if she meant what he thought she meant. “Tempted, maybe… but temptation is finicky,” he lowered his voice slightly, and despite his words, he was confident no one around them could hear, “and I’m afraid my answer might excite the eavesdroppers.”
Only she speaks in riddles. It is something marvelled by conversationalists of hers, or perhaps not marvelled, but disdained. Either way, it’s hers, so Elsie finds a deep annoyance prodding her stomach as she speaks to the charismatic young lad with his voice and skin like silk. He combats her twisted speech with indirect answers, backfiring questions, adding unwanted lines to the riddles she is so used to dictating. She barely has the patience for it, though she simultaneously feels excited by it - he’s pandering to her, hurrying with rapid steps to stay hot on her slow paced heels. Though not so much as a compliment has been paid, she’s flattered, so much so that a tight smile strains her lips upwards.
“So show me.” She says assertively, wide eyes unblinking and dark as ever. She likes that he’s leaned in so close to her, for it shows his attempt to woo her, displays his desire to wind her around his finger just as she plans to do with him. It alerts her to a challenge. She has found with her constant toying of the public that there are four types of prey; the reluctant, the submissive, the malleable and the opponents. Reluctants shy away from her, or resist her for some kind of moral direction while Submissives will do whatever she wants with barely any coaxing at all. Malleables are the most common, showing a normal amount of interest that she can mould and manipulate, but it’s the Opponents she has the most fun with, for they always have their own ideas of where the game is going, their own tactics of power play. Elsie didn’t have Phillip down as the latter kind, and yet, that’s how he’s acting now. She looks at him intently, twisting a coil of chin-length ringlets around her finger as her black eyes delve to discover whether his manner is skin deep. What would he be like out of the public, away from the facade, void of his on stage persona? She has to find out.
“Are you hinting something, Monsieur?” she says coquettishly, a bright, beaming smile lighting her face as her hand falls upon his, nails toying with his cuff link. “I have a lovely apartment, you know. There aren’t any eavesdroppers there.” The touch swirls to his wrist, and she applies a hint of pressure to affirm her teasing nature, or perhaps she’s giving that pressure as a promise? “I’m quite happy at this bar, however.”















