|
Post by eevee on Dec 15, 2008 17:48:56 GMT -5
December sixteenth, two-thousand eightEevee was at work. This was her other job, the one that she never wanted any of her friends catching her working at. She didn't like these costumes, thought they were too skimpy for her. She didn't feel like complaining to the boss, either, she'd complained too much. She had a feeling that if she complained again, she'd be gone. Eevee needed her job, even if she no longer had to get food for her and her child.
Eevee twirled around on the pole, acting sexy like a pole dancer should. She severely wished SWAT would call her work to excuse her tonight: she just didn't feel like dancing. At least she was scheduled for pole dancing and not lap dancing: she wouldn't do that even if someone payed her a thousand dollars for it. If they payed a hundred thousand or a million, maybe then she could consider it, but who would do that?
Eevee watched with disgust twisting at her insides the men ogling at her. On the outside she smiled sexily while on the inside she was cursing the men. Many of them, she knew, were married men, which sickened her. She had gotten pregnant from one of these men, and tonight she was remembering the horrible thoughts that she remembered whenever married men came to mind. If only that man hadn't killed Emilee, then she wouldn't be in this predicament.
Eevee continued to twirl until she felt a tap on her shoulder. She sighed when Lily expressed that her shift was over. "Don't lap dance with the guy wearing the black. He won't pay you much." Eevee said, which prompted a "Thanks, Angel," from Lily. See, the girls never gave each other their real names just like they didn't give their clients their real names. Eevee was known as Angel because it reminded her of Emilee. Eevee didn't care about Lily, or Lilac, or Opal, or whatever their names were.
Eevee hurried to the dressing rooms and dressed in her normal garb. Then she checked her phone for any new messages. Good, Angela had not called, and neither had that Arthur dude. It seemed both Petrelli's had other things to do. She pulled on her jacket and pushed her way to the bar. The bartender smiled at her, "The same tonight, Angel?"
Eevee smiled, "Yeah, barkeep, but add a little more 'cohol than usual. I'm beat."
The bartender smiled, "Coming right up."
|
|
|
Post by alexei on Dec 16, 2008 20:22:24 GMT -5
Alexei had had a long day at work, staying late at work to try and finish his latest engineering design. He finally sat back after being hunched over his computer for several hours and glanced around, realizing that everyone else had left for the night. Closing his laptop and sliding it into his bag, he headed towards the elevator, hoping the elevators were working again--they had stopped working earlier today, which meant he was essentially stuck on the third floor. It was mostly only times like that when Alexei got frustrated with being in a wheelchair.
To his relief, the elevator was functional again. "Have a good night, Roland," he nodded to the janitor, glancing up at him as Alexei left the building. As he wheeled to his car, he pondered whether he wanted to go straight home, have a quiet night there, or stop by the bar he went to occasionally and have a few. What the hell. Why not, he decided.
Alexei wheeled himself into the bar, tossed a quick thanks to the guy who had held the door for him, and made his way towards the counter, not paying any mind to the dancers. Hell, that wasn't why he came here; he came to this particular one 'cause it was on the way home from work. He asked the bartender for a beer, then leaned back to wait, glancing around the crowded room. He glanced up at the woman at the bar next to him and offered a greeting and a smile. "Hey."
|
|
|
Post by eevee on Dec 16, 2008 23:00:24 GMT -5
Eevee was handed her drink, in which she promptly thanked the barkeep, and she began to sip from it while she turned and watched the dancers. Lily was there, and despite what Eevee had said, she was lap-dancing with the shady-looking man. No doubt she wouldn’t get much from him. Eevee had been working this place far too long to recognize good tippers and bad.
The music changed to a slower beat. Eevee watched with near disgust as Lily started to grind the man slower. When she could bear it no more, the woman turned away. She spotted Olive pole-dancing near a black man, but she noticed that Olive was more interested in the woman next to the man rather than the man. Eevee blanched, but knew that Olive was a lesbian: everyone who knew Olive knew that. Eevee didn’t care: it didn’t matter if you were lesbian, gay, straight, whatever, you were still you as far as Eevee was concerned.
As long as you didn’t get on Eevee’s bad side—like Lily because she was lap-dancing the dude—you were fine.
“Hey,” a voiced piped up suddenly. Eevee was about to ignore it, knowing a lot of people were talking to each other. However, when Eevee heard no answering ‘hello,’ she looked around for the speaker…
And found him in a place she hadn’t thought of.
The man was in a wheelchair; that much was true. Eevee thought that somewhat funny, because bars weren’t exactly the most accessible places to be. She smiled a bit and swallowed another sip of her usual. “Hello.” She answered back. People normally didn’t speak to ‘Angel.’ They just made a gesture for her to do a lap-dance, and she did it, if she liked them.
|
|
|
Post by alexei on Dec 17, 2008 21:13:04 GMT -5
Alexei hadn't had the best of luck with women in the past. Sure, he had had girlfriends, but women never seemed to want to stick around for very long--they usually took off once they found out he couldn't...well, you know. That. He shook his head, smiling sardonically. If there was one thing he couldn't stand, it was when people thought he was mentally challenged or stupid or somehow less than any other guy, just because he couldn't walk.
Then the woman responded with a "Hello" and a smile and Alexei glanced back up at her, grinning back. He leaned forward and reached up to retrieve his drink, then sat back again. "I'm Alexei," he introduced himself, raising his voice slightly to be heard above the noise in the room.
|
|
|
Post by eevee on Dec 18, 2008 18:27:43 GMT -5
Eevee was wondering why this man was talking to her. Normally everyone shied away from her for one reason or another. One time this guy just straight out told her why he didn’t like her: he had seen her up there pole dancing and he had wanted a lap dance but she turned him down. She did that regularly, and besides, she really didn’t want to lap dance a fatso. Eevee didn’t want to be rude, so she just ignored him. Other comments could have traversed from each side of the spectrum. One side could be because she was too flirty—something she really wasn’t tonight—or because she wasn’t flirty enough—the other side.
Eevee wondered if this man was going to blow her off like that fatso had, or if she was going to get a conversation out of him. When he said his name was Alexei, Eevee knew it would be the second option. She smiled and reached down—she was on one of those bar-stools—and offered her hand. She smiled a brilliant smile and said, “I’m Eevee.”
She leaned back up and caught a glance that the barkeep threw at her. He mouthed the words, ‘your name’s Eevee?’ Eevee smiled, and put a finger to her mouth. She trusted barkeep to keep her name a secret. She made the ‘finger to mouth’ gesture turn into her wiping her mouth so that Alexei wouldn’t notice. Then she set her cup down and smiled down at the man. “It’s a bit cramped in here tonight.” And, typical Eevee pointing out things that other people probably didn't want to talk about, “How’d you get past all those thugs without them picking on you?”
|
|
|
Post by alexei on Dec 20, 2008 13:57:45 GMT -5
Alexei wasn't sure if the woman was going to continue the conversation or not. He had gotten used to people giving him strange looks when he tried to start a conversation, or acting weird or uncomfortable when they were talking to him--it still made him frustrated, though. I am still a normal person! he wanted to yell sometimes. The fact that my legs don't work doesn't mean that my brain doesn't either! One time in the grocery store, while waiting in line, a woman had even gone so far as to pat him on the shoulder and tell him how great it was that he was so independent. Seriously.
However, the woman didn't seem fazed at all. She offered a bright smile, told him her name--Eevee--and extended her hand towards Alexei, which he automatically reached up and shook.
He nodded in agreement when Eevee mentioned that it was really crowded, then grinned appreciatively when she voiced the next question--for once, it wasn't some comment about how fabulous he was for being out on his own, oh so independent and all that crap. "Like you said, it's pretty crowded." He looked up at her. "I think I just managed to sneak in under their line of sight."
|
|
|
Post by eevee on Dec 20, 2008 21:29:38 GMT -5
Eevee laughed at what the man said. It was true, unless they were fighting, or they dropped something, or they were playing pool, the thugs never really looked down; Eevee knew that from experience. She smiled warmly at the man—she knew what he must have been thinking: will she talk to me, or pity me? In fact, Eevee had gotten what he got every day when she was pregnant. No one wanted her on SWAT when she was pregnant, and neither did the pole dancers. Everyone looked at her like she had come down with a plague. And look where that got her.
Emilee was dead.
She didn’t want to dwell on the past, though, and so didn’t. Instead, she smiled even more warmly at the man named Alexei. “I would have said, ‘I know what you mean,’ but I am not in the predicament you are in. However, I do know how it is to have people stare at you all the time, but not for entirely the same reasons.”
Eevee swirled her drink around absentmindedly, but the smile was still there. “Yeah, when I was pregnant with my daughter, I was forced to take leave of both my jobs.” Eevee said, looking again at Alexei. She didn’t care about telling him things she considered secret. She trusted the dude, and they’d only just met. Besides, she’d had a bad night so far, it was time to liven things up.
|
|
|
Post by alexei on Dec 23, 2008 1:32:11 GMT -5
Alexei grinned as Eevee continued talking to him. He could count on one hand how many times he had had a normal conversation like this with a stranger. Usually by this point, it would have gotten to an awkward silence, because the other person wouldn't have anything...well, normal to say. After almost ten years, he had gotten used to the stares that he received often, but it still pissed him off to no end.
Eevee went on, saying that she understood what it was like having people stare at you all the time, and Alexei smiled appreciatively. There was a fine line between awkwardly avoiding mentioning his, ahem, disability, and going over the top, but she seemed to be walking that line without difficulty. When she went on to tell him about when she was pregnant, Alexei was a little surprised--he had just met her five minutes before--but was slightly pleased that she seemed to trust him so easily.
Alexei's neck was getting a little tired from looking up, and he rolled his head, trying to ease the tension a little bit. He glanced up again, saying the first thing that popped into his head. "So, what do you do? For a living, I mean?"
|
|
|
Post by eevee on Dec 23, 2008 15:35:19 GMT -5
Eevee wondered not for the first time why this man was still talking to her. And why she was still talking to this man. Normally conversations at the bar only lasted a maximum of thirty seconds—a good ‘hello’ from both people usually sufficed. But instead of a thirty-second conversation, Eevee was telling her whole life story to the dude. And, better yet, she liked it. If Eevee knew nothing about the bars, and in fact she knew quite a lot, then it was this: conversations like this didn’t come around every day. Eevee was going to treasure it, even if this dude thought she’s crazy in the end.
Because, really, who would ever speak about pregnancy in a bar? Eevee, obviously. And who would ask where the other works in a bar? Alexei, obviously.
Wait, Alexei asked where Eevee worked. Eevee frowned, trying to decide what to say. Should she tell him the truth? Why not? She’d told him the truth thus far, and she’d never told anyone about her pregnancy before now. Then she noticed that Alexei was craning his head to look at her. ‘Best be nice at least once in my life,’ she thought to herself, and smiled down at him. “One sec.” She said, holding up a finger.
Then she slipped off the barstool and moved it out of the way to make room for the smaller chair she put in its place. The chair had a back, so she put the back toward Alexei and sat in it so that she leaned on the chair back. “You want to know where I work?” She asked the rhetorical question, because Alexei had already asked where she worked. “I work here. During the day I’m a SWAT officer, but during the night I come here to pole dance. It’s not exactly the most fun job there ever was, but it earns me money.” She laughed a bit, “You wouldn’t think it from seeing me just how I am now, but I can get pretty flirty when I feel like it.” She smiled at him, and wondered how he thought about talking to a person who was in both SWAT and pole dancing. Those two were on completely different spectrums. “So, since I told you where I work, I think it polite to do the same, yes?” She said, still offering that rare smile that she only gave to people she trusted. She almost never smiled when in uniform, and only gave sexy smiles when pole dancing. This smile was genuine.
|
|
|
Post by alexei on Dec 25, 2008 20:47:08 GMT -5
Alexei found that he was enjoying this refreshingly blunt and open conversation with a woman he barely knew. He watched as Eevee got off the tall bar stool, replacing it with a normal chair so he could look at her without craning his neck awkwardly back and to the side like he had been doing. "Thanks," he said, finally looking her in the face and smiling gratefully. No one had ever done that without asking, gotten down onto his level while having a conversation to make it more comfortable for him. Usually he had to ask not-so-subtly, you know, hey, can you sit down so I don't have to wrench my head backwards? Thanks.
Eevee went on to tell what her job was, telling that she was a SWAT officer during the day and one of the dancers here at night. That surprised Alexei. Yeah, he could see her being a SWAT officer, he was kind of getting that sort of vibe from her, but he really couldn't picture her as, well, a pole dancer. Not that he paid that much attention to the dancers, but still. He grinned. "I guess that's what you'd call being on opposite ends of the spectrum."
Then Eevee turned the question around and asked it right back to him. He nodded. "I'm an aerospace engineer. I work at a jet propulsion lab downtown." He grinned. "I guess you wouldn't really expect to find someone like me here; it's not really what'd you call a scientist's hang-out place. I just stop here sometimes 'cause it's on the way home from work."
|
|
|
Post by eevee on Dec 27, 2008 1:36:49 GMT -5
It wasn’t enough that Eevee had told this stranger all about her daughter, but now the woman was moving chairs and asking this dude questions? What was the world coming to, Eevee actually being nice when she wasn’t getting paid for a job? Eevee would have been distracted by this if she had let herself be distracted by it. However, Eevee was only thinking of one thing, ‘damn, he’s really easy to talk to.’
Eevee frowned slightly when Alexei said his profession. She saw him as the type to fiddle around on computers all day. But that wasn’t why Eevee had frowned, it was because what Alexei said next rang true for her: she never really expected someone like him to come into a bar, much less this bar. Eevee worked here, and she knew the sort of crappy thugs that came here, demanding lap dances and giving no money in return. However, Alexei wouldn’t be lap dancing anyone, and Eevee didn’t think a lap dance would do much to rile him up.
Eevee liked that about Alexei, though. She’d done too many dances, and needed to at least know a guy that didn’t want one. Or maybe he did, she didn’t know, and she wasn’t about to ask.
“Yeah.” Eevee said, turning the small frown into a smile, “This place is on the way home from work for me, too.” Sarcasm was good when you’re first meeting someone, and Eevee knew from experience that too little sarcasm threw off a relationship, and too much did the exact same thing. But, curiosity won over, and she leaned inward. “So, I bet you know what SWAT people do, and what … dancers do, what do aero space engineers do?”
|
|
|
Post by alexei on Dec 28, 2008 19:50:02 GMT -5
Alexei laughed slightly when Eevee said this place was on her way home from work too, appreciating the sarcasm in her voice. There were far too few people in this world who just didn't get sarcasm, and as someone who spoke sarcasm like a second language, Alexei easily got frustrated with those people who just didn't get it.
He laughed again when Eevee asked what exactly he did, because he knew that was coming. "I design aircraft," he explained. "Specifically, I work on aerodynamics and propulsion, like designing the engines and that kind of thing." He grinned. "I guess you could say I'm a rocket scientist." He gestured at his t-shirt, the company's logo on it, and emblazoned across the chest, "It's not rocket science...oh wait, yes it is."
|
|
|
Post by eevee on Dec 28, 2008 20:19:03 GMT -5
Eevee had known Alexei would be a geek, but not that bad. However, she really didn’t care. Alexei was the first guy in a long while that had actually so far shared an intelligent conversation with her, and in a bar, no less. Alexei was a guy that Eevee could see herself with him as a boyfriend, if that ever happened. She wondered if he’d had many girlfriends, and if they’d stayed with him. He needed a good girl who’d keep him company.
Besides, Eevee had never really dated anyone before. The people she did date were all assholes who didn’t know their butt from their head.
Eevee knew from experience that this guy was not like the thugs she’d dated before. Maybe all she needed was a good geek (no offense to Alexei, but she thought all rocket scientist people were geeks), and all he needed was a good girl who wouldn’t care if he couldn’t use his legs or not.
“Rocket science. I usually lump rocket science in with the geeky category. However, I like that you, because you are lumped in the geek category too, are in a bar with a bunch of thugs.” Alexei earned another grin from Eevee. Grins were infrequent at best, and smiles even rarer. She wondered if he thought himself as a geek, too. “But you’re a good geek because you hang out at bars.” And, trying to take the sting off of her comment, she added, “I like you.”
|
|
|
Post by alexei on Dec 28, 2008 20:58:52 GMT -5
Alexei found that he was enjoying this conversation--it was the first normal, intelligent conversation he'd had with a woman, or anyone for that matter, outside of the jet propulsion lab, in a loooong time. And it was in the last place you'd expect to have an intelligent conversation, in a bar full of thugs and pole dancers, no less. Alexei didn't want to get ahead of himself, but he hoped that he and Eevee would, well, get to know each other better. Maybe he could finally get a girlfriend who wouldn't run off once she found out that he was ALL paralyzed down there.
When Eevee told him that she usually lumped rocket scientists into the "geek" category, Alexei burst out laughing, because that's exactly what he categorized himself as, either a geek or a nerd. Or both. He finally took a deep breath and stopped laughing. "I definitely put myself in the geek category too." Then she went on with a blunt, I like you. Alexei looked at her and grinned. "I like you, too."
|
|
|
Post by eevee on Dec 28, 2008 21:28:16 GMT -5
Eevee laughed when he said he lumped himself in the ‘geek’ category, too. Well at least she hadn’t offended him. And, even though they’d just met, Alexei said he liked her, too. She wondered what he meant, ‘cause she meant as a boyfriend relationship rather than just friend. He seemed like the kind of guy that wouldn’t blow off people, mainly girls, because he didn’t strike her as the gay type, after a one night stand.
Eevee was blunt, and she knew it. She was usually even blunter than she was now. In fact, usually, she stated the obvious so much that once she even straight out and said to a guy, “You know, you stink and I don’t like you.” The guy had stank; it was as if he hadn’t washed in days, months even. Or maybe he was a zombie.
But Alexei, for all his disability, was no zombie. She let the words ‘I like you, too,’ sink in for a bit, and then she smiled. She’d smiled way too much tonight and she had a feeling that her cheeks would begin to hurt soon. But, for once, she didn’t care. And suddenly a burning question entered her mind. “So, I’m guessing you’re not in the wheelchair just because you feel like it. What do you have, and how far does it extend to?”
|
|