#intoxikittened

She lingers around his apartment on the nights where the clubs aren’t her scene for one reason or another (maybe she didn’t have the right vibe, maybe she actually just wanted to spend some time with him). In one hand, Roxy holds her phone, choosing one pop song to the next. The music follows her as she wanders between the living room, where Ringabel is mindlessly lying on his sofa, journal open on his chest.

"You get so boring when we’re not out," she says, a sigh and groan in her voice, and he smiles at her. He doesn’t respond until she does another walk from the bathroom and back, martini glass miraculously empty.

"Finding time to collect oneself is good for the soul."

Roxy looks at him then, stopping just in front of the glass coffee table. Her weight sways on her stocky thighs, purple lipstick worn just at the edges and perfume lingering just enough so he can smell it under the vodka.

"You’re so gay," she smiles, and his mouth curls into a soft laugh. Setting down her phone (not the glass, despite it being empty), she steps about the table and doesn’t bother to motion him up. Ringabel is too considerate to not have already sat up and pat the pillow on the left side of the couch for her drunk ass.

"What’re you always thinkin’ soooo hard ‘bout anyway?"

"Hum, you make me sound so droll. I was under the impression women loved introspective types."

"Ya can’t put us all under one umbrella, dumby."

There’s a pause here, as if that had never occurred to him. He nods then, leaning back and saying nothing as she reaches to grab the notebook from his lap. With delicate fingers, she flips it open to a middle page and spreads it on the table.

The rim of her glass rests dry on her bottom lip, as if out of habit.

There are drawings here. Dresses, skirts, blouses. Some observational, some maybe not— Roxy can’t really tell.

"This one’s cute," she says, voice delighted and painted nail tapping at a dress with an open back.

"Is it? I was going for sexy, actually."

—

Turns out, it is more of a sexy look. it fits snugly around her thighs, and she feels bare in it— which is great. She loves it; feels even more confident than usual in it. Really, Roxy has to hand it to him. All that oggling does Ringabel (some) good, because he knows just how to make a girl feel like a pretty amethyst gem.

"I look so hot!!" She gasps, turning her neck to look at her rear in the mirror. "Daaammmn!"

Ringabel looks just as proud of it as she does, nodding in approval with that smug, satisfied grin on his face. “I have to admit, this is some of my finest work…” He sighs pleasantly. “having a muse to work off changes the whole experience.”

"Muse?" Roxy snorts, putting her hands on her hips and peering at him.

"Why, of course! An inspiration! A dress is to fit the woman, not the other way around. Doesn’t it feel that way when you wear that?"

For a guy who’s borderline a pig, he really does love women. It weirds her out sometimes, all the worship and then doublesided ignorance. He blathers on for a bit more, something about how she, Roxy, has been particularly easy to work off of with all her languid stretching, lopsided stumbling about the apartment, and high treble R&B music.

"You’re sooo gay."

She goes back to looking at the cut of the dress down her back, half smiling.

—

Ringabel seems to have no real trouble finding other muses after that. Women seem more than happy to hang around him at the prospect of getting a dress custom made— it’s weird, Roxy guesses. Of course, Ringabel was pretty popular even before that.

He has this weird way with being just the right degree of raunchy, cheesy, and then smiling and showing you the handsome line of his jaw.

But now he doesn’t have to hunt them down so much— they fling themselves at him, and it’s (again) weird, but he shows a pretty good amount of discretion when saying yes or no. Out of the many that have approached him (and been honest with their interests), Ringabel took time to take maybe a third on a date. And in the end, he’d only began to work on a dress for one out of those.

Under the dim light in his kitchen, Roxy is sipping Svedka out of a souvenir shot glass. She remains resigned, half pouty— he’s on the phone with someone, and it doesn’t sound like a girl. It sounds like someone offering him money. Permanent money, and notoriety too, probably.

—

He finishes some of the sketches from that night, and she flips through them in the morning, hair frayed over her brow in a hangover. They’re good, of course. There are a lot of half finished ones on the pages earlier, as if he contemplated the dress for only a moment before he decided he couldn’t invest his heart into her that way.

Er, it. Not her.

She blinks tiredly to herself, expression tightening mildly as the sun starts blaring through the window.

"Here," Roxy hears him say. Suddenly, there is a cup of coffee (with cream) and two tablets of aspirin on the table. "I’ll shut the blinds in a moment."

Here, a fond smile colors his face and Roxy feels weird again. Before her mouth can catch up to her brain, he’s speaking again— one of the perks of not being hungover.

"I’ve got to take my leave now—" (Who says somethin’ like that? What is this, the 1800’s? She miles inwardly.) "make yourself at home."

"Glaaaaaaadly," Roxy replies, shutting the sketchbook with a firm pat.

—

Ringabel isn’t back by the time she wakes up from her sleep. The coffee has gone cold, though she did take the aspirin before knocking out. The sunlight is still twinkling through the blinds of the balcony doors, vents humming quietly through the apartment.