capeandcowllogs | lucky me, lucky me, now let's go.

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lucky me, lucky me, now let's go.

WHO: SPIKE and THE SHADE
WHERE: some fancyass bar
WHEN: Friday night, December 14
WARNINGS: hipsters bein bipsters.
SUMMARY: Spike stumbles into the wrong bar. Oops.
FORMAT: prose I guess W E L P

Spike hadn't done much since arriving in the City save drinking and fucking up, two things he was actually very good at. It made perfect sense that just when life was going his way, an alternate dimension would sweep him off his feet. Surprising or not, it didn't help the vampire cope. While eventually adaptable, he wasn't a fan of this place, and he didn't intend to accept being here until he had no other option.

And picking the locals brains always ended him in the same place: drunk. He would barhop until even he might experience alcohol poisoning and then somehow make his way home. He knew he couldn't even steer his stolen scooter, and had ditched it several clubs ago. Spike was useless here; not even a proper vampire. If he even counted for one of those in the first place. He didn't really care about the semantics.

Draining the last of the last dregs in his bottle of Johnny Walker, cleverly disguised in a brown paper bag, he threw it to the curb just in front of the place. Though it was muffled slightly by the bag, the bouncer standing outside in the cold gave him a look. He shrugged and lit a cigarette, making his way for the door. They had booze in there dammit and it would be his.

Against their better judgment, they let Spike into the club, mostly to save themselves a physical altercation. He almost mourned the fight that could've been. Smoking his way to the bar, he threw himself into a stool, let out a world-weary sigh and then promptly put out his cigarette in the peanut dish. Were those gourmet peanuts? In a tiny ceramic ramakin? Where the bloody hell was he?

"Whiskey, double, on the." He parsed out his words, leaning back a bit against the barstool. (No, not 'slumping.') If there hadn't been a back to it he would've gone rolling across the floor. This was a terrible place.

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In even a rather upscale establishment like this, the Shade looked out of place. With the gentlemen in their suits, women in their dresses, a shadowy, shadowy man with his ascot and tophat, a cane and the duster that lit just around his calves, he certainly didn't look like he belonged. He never did, of course, standing in relief, like a dash of black on an otherwise lovely painting.

Not that he minded, of course. He'd always stood out when he wished. That was the point, to stand out. To be the oddity in the sea of normalcy, prompt the questions, and following that came the conversation. Shade did love conversations. He enjoyed stories, it was true, and not necessarily his own stories. Time would come to tell those, but without his journals, some were merely lost to the annals of time, as he wasn't about to write on them once more.

But perhaps he would start writing of his time in the City. Regardless, the gentleman that stumbled in was no gentleman. Bleached hair, a rough voice, the figure reminded him a bit of some musician or the other that he never quite paid enough attention to, so he couldn't think of the name. Something about him screamed interesting, at least more so than the rest of the sorts here. He swooped in for the approach, leaning against the bar in time to complete his sentence moments after he leaned, or slumped, rather, into his chair.

"Was that on the rocks?"

"No," he growled, not even sure who asked him that. He realized it wasn't the bartender a little too late, turning to the guy next to him. Nothing. Other side--oh, okay. Was he hallucinating? "As in make it quick."

No matter how hard Spike tried he couldn't stop staring at the man's hat. He didn't even know they made hats like that anymore.

"What are you supposed to be, then? Elton John finds a time machine?" What were tenses. He just didn't know.

The Shade could only laugh in response, his eyebrows lifting at the turn of phrase as well, but he only waved a hand, the one occupied with a small glass, which was filled with a cloudy, green mixture.

"I should hardly think not. Sir Elton has hardly the ability to pull this entire outfit off, despite his wishes to do so. He doesn't hold himself correctly."

It was such a light, joking statement, but with a small sip, he eyed the guy with an only half-interested air. "Come now, you can create a better insult than that, can't you?"

Spike narrowed his eyes. Was that drink green? Or was he really that drunk?

"Alright, but this isn't really an insult so much as... Are you real?" He was serious.

He couldn't help it, he smiled, his grin sharp in the low light of the bar, white teeth standing out even in the dim light.

"Why yes, I believe I am real. As real as the shadows that line the walls, and the ones that creep to the ceiling," he said it with a low laugh, using his cane to indicate up, even as he took a sip from the small glass.

It was the picture of refinement, everything from head down to the spatterdashers on his feet were setting him apart. An eyebrow lifted from over the sunglasses that sat on his nose. "Are you expecting me to go by the name 'La fée verte' perhaps?"

He looked at the other man like he was a real nut!!!!! Like he had any room to judge. "Favorite what now?"

"It's a drink, my boy. A rather delicate one, not so bold as whiskey, for certain." He set the now empty dainty little glass aside, and the bartender swept it away like an obedient servant.

The Shade was obviously a frequent visitor to the place, and he knew where the tips lie. He sure as hell wasn't going to hop to it for just anyone.

"It looks like mouthwash more'n a drink," he related, slamming back his whiskey and intimidating someone into removing the glass in a similar fashion. It still took at least twice as long, but he had a new one in front of him before too long a stretch. Time wasn't really passing normally in his alcohol-addled mind as it was.

He held up his new drink in a toasting manner, careful not to spill any though it was a close call. "What's all this then?" Spike gestured to the Shade's... entire person. Yeah and still, he has no room to judge him considering his ridiculous appearance especially in such a classy establishment. He doesn't seem to notice, though.

"All this?" he asked, his voice still sharp and particularly American, although his vowels still drew out slightly. Like the echoes of an accent that he just hadn't quite shaken, but for the most part, he sounded like he belonged stateside.

His hand waved for another, and the bartender (with surprising efficiency) laid out a carafe of water, sugar, a slitted spoon, and a small glass with a vibrant liquid. Shade carefully prepared his drink, spoon on the glass, sugar on the spoon, and he began to drip the water down, murking the sharp green of the drink.

"This is what you would call my clothes. I'm sure you heard of such things before. Now, if you're remarking on the cut and dated fashion, then I'm afraid you caught me. I'm not from this time in history."

Spike watched this practice with seeming interest, though perhaps he was just too drunk to shift his gaze elsewhere, the world may never know.

"Oh, hey, you too?" Spike shrugged. "You stand out in here, that's all."

He was starting to run his words together, but that wouldn't keep him from drinking the next whiskey, and the next... He's have to steal another scooter tomorrow if his was gone, and that would be such a problem in the off-season!!! Maybe he could get a real bike.

Oh, right, he was having a conversation. "...Not that I do."

"Oh no, in a dive like this? You fit right in," he muttered it, sarcasm lilting his words only slightly. Perhaps it was Jack's influence that had done it, or perhaps the culmination of far too many sorts. Brian Savage had rather favored the humor, after all, even if Shade had been a little darker, in that time.

Merely one of the longer stretches of his budding eternity, but the time had been just as hard as the society, and Shade had adapted along with it, at least a bit.

"And you are eluding that you're from another time? I can't imagine it's any longer than the seventies."

He grumbled something then looked up. "So I haven't changed my look in a while, what's it to you?" Though his look in the seventies had been... slightly more radical.

"Mere curiosity, that is all," he murmured, lifting a shoulder. "I find that most people out out of their own time are much more..." he trailed off to punctuate his words with a flick of his wrist. "Behind. You don't give that impression."

He blinks a few times, trying to reorient himself. "Well, ta, huh. Try to stay up on what the kids are doing, don't I?" Or more like he's barraged with it wherever he goes. "It's only responsible."

"Is it?" his eyebrows quirked, perhaps in thought, or perhaps in confusion. "Most take time to adjust, you know. To the new century, and who could blame them. Why, in my time, we could only dream of flying, let alone actually doing it, and yet here we are now. I'm merely a unique case to my time."

"I guess you could call me unique too. Or maybe just adaptable." He lifts an eyebrow, studying the other man. "You can fly?"

"Fly? Oh, I suppose I could, easily enough," he lifted a shoulder as if it were no big deal. Flying really wasn't. He'd floated, of course, and could merely leave the shadows underneath his feet as footing, but he'd never honestly tried to fly. There was no point, actually.

"I've honestly never really attempted to all-out fly."

Spike frowned. If he thought he might be able to fly, he definitely would try it just for kicks. What was wrong with this guy?

"What good are you, then?" It was a very serious question.

"To anyone else?" he asked. "None whatsoever, honestly. If I were trying to be useful, I would be out there in spandex or leather, yes? As it is, I would much prefer to be in the warmth of this comfortable little establishment, enjoying my drink."

As if to prove the point, he sipped at the absinthe, eyes sliding closed in pure enjoyment of the liquor.

"Fair enough." Though Spike gave him a weird look. No one should enjoy things in such an overt fashion. ...What was he his grandmother? Spike let go of the errant thought and waved a hand. "Vigilantism is a bit small-scale anyway. I could give two sticks about some mugger in the alley I passed on the way down here." Spike knocks back the rest of his whiskey and frowns. Why was he lying? He had saved that girl, as drunk as he'd been. Almost got himself killed in the process but his life wasn't worth much anyway.

"Of course, but what's the fun in simply leaving it?" he smiled only slightly. The Shade, of course, would have likely helped the girl himself, but who could say. He hardly didn't like to see ladies be mugged, or really anyone, but that was why he'd mostly stuck with heists.

No need to bother the average joe when he could have pretties and treasures for himself. "Although it depends, after all. What if some dastardly villain were to, oh say, take an entire museum?"

"That's just dramatic enough, huh?" He hails for a beer. "I might bite."

A beat. "Why, planning a heist sometime soon?"

"If I were, you would hardly know. I may advertise my deeds when I want a fight, but I'm hardly going to tell you if I actually want something," he waved a hand, dismissive of the subject. He wasn't about to tell anyone anything.

It wasn't that he thought he could be stopped, but he hardly wanted to deal with the fight that would occur, and you never knew in a realm like this.

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lucky me, lucky me, now let's go.

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