View source for Log:Glitter Strip (Anti)Hero on NYE

{{ Log
| cast = [[Czcibor_Kowal|Czcibor]], [[Lolly]]
| summary = It's New Year's Eve at the Plank!  Lolly has had an exasperating night, but a slightly buzzed Czcibor comes and does a glittery strip tease just for her!  Okay, he does it because he's a sweetheart and she said it would be harder to think he was a fairy monster if she'd seen him strip to his skivvies and sparkle.  Except there's a minor problem.  He's Polish.  After tears and self-recriminations, he admits to using Spring magic once to mind control Lolly!  Lolly, rather than kick him out into the bitter cold, demands instead that he drink it.  Bitters, that is.  An entire bottle of Angostura at 44.7% alcohol by volume, and he's not allowed to rinse the taste away, or magically cure his hangover tomorrow morning.  Also, Lolly really needs to learn Polish. Stat.
| gamedate = 2018.01.02
| gamedatename = 
| subtitle = Did he make it to the toilet?
| location = The Plank - Lolly's Private Place
| categories = Changeling
| log = And there's a knock on the office door.


Rather than text it, while there's no sound from beyond the thoroughly soundproofed door, the door swings open shortly after his knock, revealing a Lolly dressed up in a sequined, shimmery short dress and more makeup than Czcibor has ever seen her wearing. Also, a lot of glitter. 

Granted, the glitter doesn't look like it was deliberate... it doesn't exactly match the colours of her sequins.

She also has her hair down, and its latest tendency toward bunching up in lovely pseudo-petal curly-tips is all the more obvious with her entire head to see it happening on. 

"Hey, um. Happy New Year." Lolly steps back to let him in, then closes the door behind him. "I told Margot I was going to be with a guest for a while, so she'll handle the girls. You, um. We could go back to my apartment, um, if you wanted to. I kind of want to hide. There was this jerk out there earlier scaring everyone about taxes, and telling the less popular girls that if they didn't dance better, I'd fire them for a tax break, and I keep having weepy boobs shoved in my face for reassurance."


Wearing thoroughly boring and nondescript clothes himself, Mask currently strengthened, Czcibor's holding a tankard of grog in one hand and has a growing look of indignation on his face. "What a douchecanoe!" he says in mingled dismay and sympathetic irritation. "The poor things. Poor you! God. Don't you have a bouncer?" he asks as he steps in further but doesn't get in Lolly's personal space. "Uh, happy new year to you, too. And sure, if you don't mind me in there. I mean -- unless you really ''do'' want me to strip for you and that's why you're inviting me..."

He looks like he's not sure how he should feel about this, so has some more of the terrible grog. "Either way I'll enable your hiding as much as I possibly can without getting arrested," the ageless Polish man says cheerfully. "And that's a cute dress."


Lolly flaps her hands at him, a little awkward, and turns to unlock the door to the apartment behind the office. "I mean, like, -yeah-, I want you to strip, but it's supposed to be something fun, not something you're driven to to escape Sam's Authentically Awful Grog."

She gets the door open and pads inside. No shoes. Just, no. Can't even. Those are left peeking out from under her desk.

The single spacious room is poorly lit, but that seems more due to a lack of light sources with decent bulbs in them than anything deliberate. "It's still kind of a mess," she admits, shamefaced. "I...haven't quite been able to figure out what to do with the mermaids. I, uhm. I know what HE did with them. Most of the Plank's ready cash has been going back into the building, to fix the stuff Uncle Jack had just been letting slide. I don't care if I spend my life running a stupid sleazy strip club, but I'm gosh darned going to run one up to code."

And be glum, and mope.

Recollecting her duties as a hostess, Lolly asks, "Do you, um, need anything? Real food or water to wash that down without gagging?"


"Pff. It'll be fun if I'm drunk," Czcibor says with a laugh, then lifts the tankard and finishes it off. And then almost gags at the last gulp, and winces theatrically. "Guhhhg," he says with his hand over his midsection, pulling an incredible face. "Water would be great. Uh-- have you considered selling the mermaids on ebay? To like, hipsters? I used to run my best friend's ebay, he made an absurd amount of cash and didn't believe in banks so he stuck it all in the crisper in our fridge..."

He ''does'' toe out of his boots at the door, so he doesn't track the club into Lolly's room.


Lolly goes to the sink to grab a glass and fill it up with predictably frigid water. In these temperatures, she's lucky it's still liquid at all. She gets two of them, and brings one over to Czcibor, sipping at hers only once he has his. Considering the mermaids, she makes a face of her own, then shakes her head. 

Her free hand lifts to indicate the bed as she explains, "It's all nailed in, built in place. Nothing bolted. Can't actually -move- the bed at all. I, uhm, installed some storage shelves under there so I'd have room for stuff and not have to go crawling in dust bunnies." She frowns, then lifts a shoulder in a shrug and nudges a rickety chair out from the equally rickety dining table. "It's stronger than it looks. Um. I mean, I guess if I can find someone who doesn't mind doing a bit of carpentry, I wouldn't mind replacing them... and the coat rack. Gosh, the coat rack."


It's only after actually draining half the glass and getting brainfreeze for his troubles-- and pressing the center of his forehead with his fingers while his face is all squinched up-- that Czcibor amends, "You'd be surprised what hipsters will buy. And I can probably get at least the carved elements of the structure detached if the nails are sensibly metal and not unsensibly iron for some godforsaken reason..."

He lets out a slow breath, brow furrowed with fading icepick pain, then shifts his weight to the foot that's actually still his own. "Uh. Anyway. That, yes. I'd definitely recommend me doing that once you've got a legit carpenter lined up, though. And you'll want to stay someplace else in the meantime. I can either fund that or we can pledge for cash and I can figure out the tax shit for money out of nowhere-- but if I can get hold of my brother, he's the actual CPA. And American tax laws are draconian."

There's a pause, and he's frowning again, checking his jacket pockets. "I forgot to ask again, by the way, how are you on fruit? And do you want a scarthistle? If you temp-tattoo yourself with it and shove a little magic in it, it helps you be better at people for a month. I need to get someone artistic to put one on me, I'm like... I can draw stick figures. And very fat cats."


Lolly just...stares.

On the one hand, the fact that Czcibor can even GET brainfreeze is reassuring.

On the other, the fact that he is talking about a magical promise to get money, _while worrying about taxes on it_, and criticising the American tax laws, is...

Yeah. Staring.

"I...um. I'm sorry, Mr. Ko--Captain," she corrects herself, "Captain Kowal, I think you lost me at magical money and taxes. I'm all out of fruits, and I have never heard of a .. uh, temporary tattoo which actually helps with social skills instead of just looking cheap and silly." She shifts, uncomfortable, and takes a small sip of her own water. "I was, um. I was wondering if turning green was normal, though. Green-er. I...um. I dunno much about other plant people, I guess, but I didn't really change colours before and maybe it's just a fairy thing but it was weird and I just haven't really been hungry and oh gosh I'm sorry, I'm babbling, I'm just kind of nervous about all this."

She wrings her hands. Like. Actual handwringing. Who DOES that?


The glass gets set down all of a sudden, and the Captain steps forward to carefully and swiftly-- lightly, also; she can pull them away easily-- take Lolly's hands in his own still and steady ones, warm and solid. "Hey, it's okay," he says, and if silver eyes are a little bit glassy it's undoubtedly from the grog plus whatever else he'd been drinking that night. "It's okay to be nervous, and it's going to be okay anyway, because you're in charge of you. I know a lot of shortcuts, and I know a lot of people, and you can say no to absolutely anything I suggest, and you can say 'not now', and you can say 'shut up and let me think', and you can say 'explain that like a reasonable human being later, with steps, and possibly diagrams, because Captain Kowal you're very fluffing weird and you need to take classes in how to teach people things'."

He's smiling, and it's affectionate and warm and self-deprecatingly apologetically amused. "You are the ''only'' person who's in charge of you, and don't let anyone tell you otherwise. I believe in you. You have a bigger cope bucket for real life than most of the people I know. You can handle this weird shit."

Unless Lolly grabs ''him'', or unless she's already pulled away, it's at this point that Czci takes a half step back again and pulls things out of his jacket pockets. "Now-- I've only got preserved fruit on me right now, but it's yours if you want it. Blushberry, some of those seed pod things you were trying to get before, and like I said, an extra scarthistle. I've never tried it before, though, so I can hang on to it until I can tell you how it worked out for me. Unless ''you'' want to draw on me," he offers cheerfully. And then he takes out the dried blushberries and ertwen, and moves to put them on Lolly's desk. "As far as turning green and not being hungry-- uh, well, Liam-- my ex? Was a snapdragon, and he didn't turn green, but I'm thinking photosynthesis is probably a better idea than cyborg hands. Maybe get some sun lamps?" A beat, and he adds, "And you can call me Czcibor if you want. Or Czcyk. A lot of people say Czci but it sounds... um..."


Yeah, glassy metallic eyes is something which could be featured in nightmares, but in this case, no. Lolly's too distracted, and anxious, and doesn't really seem to be 'there' until he starts mentioning photosynthesis as an actual thing. She goes noodly then, just drops into her seat in a human-shaped heap of relief. 

Lolly closes her eyes, presses her lips together to regain her composure, then opens her eyes and tries to smile. "I don't know," she pretends to muse, "at least if I am calling you daddy, you'll never have to worry about me hitting on you. Also, stripping for me would be -really- weird."

There's a slight pause before she shifts her weight, cheeks an odd green-pink which nonetheless is as lovely as a Flowering is always supposed to be, and offers him a shy smile. "Czcyk is least weird, I think."


At least they're ''pretty'' silver eyes. Like super bishounen eyes. That look like normal eyes except for being pretty pretty silver in the iris. So glassy does in fact make them basically just look pretty...drunk. Or possibly allergized, but he ''did'' date a flower for years, so probably drunk. But:

She's flopped in the chair and ''teasing him'', and he actually looks worried and edging on uncomfortably dismayed until it's ''clear'' she's teasing him, and then his hand claps to his chest and he exaggeratedly sighs with relief. "Yes ''please'' don't call me daddy, even if I'm probably technically old enough to be. It'd be really weird even if you never hit on me and I never stripped for you," he says, grimacing. And then he moves to lean against the edge of something leanable, loosely crossing his arms and relaxes into looking pleased. "Good. Czcyk is what my friends call me. Unless they call me Captain, which, granted, sometimes they do."

Then he looks down and frowns contemplatively. "Are you ''sure'' you want me to glitterstrip? One more vodka will do it, and there is ''always'' saying 'no god no nevermind put your clothes back on you look much better with them on', but I still think it's a terrible idea and you'll make faces."


Lolly covers her mouth to hide a giggle. "That's kind of the point," she points out, lips curving in a small half-smile. "It will be a lot harder to be scared of you once you've doused yourself in stripper glitter for me and danced around a pole in your skivvies. Any time I start to freak out about how much of a fairy you are, I can think, yes, but he is also my secret glitter strip club hero." Glitter Strip Club Hero Powers, Activate!

Sobering a smidge, she adds a shy, "You could call me Lily, if you want. Nobody does. I mean," she hastens to assure, "it IS my name. My real one. Lolly's just 'cause I liked lollipops when I was little, and it sort of stuck. I...kind of miss the real one. Even if the evil fairy sort of made me match it."


"In Polish," Czcibor says thoughtfully, a tiny smile playing at the corner of his mouth, "Lollipop is ''lizek''. I could call you Lizeczka. Or -- to take Lily down that path which I take all names -- you could be Liliaska, or Lileczka, or Lilka... Lilusianka... Lilusianeczka..."

Now he's grinning. "The smaller and cuter one makes a name, you see, the longer it gets. But I could call you Lily if that's what you miss."

But then he pushes off his leany edge, lifting a finger and looking terribly amused, and he finds someplace to sit and starts rolling up his left trouser leg. "I said it'd only take another vodka. And it amuses me to say, when people ask-- when they see how much I drink-- if I've got a hollow leg to keep it all in-- 'yes, I do'." Rolled all the way up the prosthetic, and to where it connects to flesh, there. He unclasps some clasps and glances up. "You don't have to look if it's awkward."

And then he twists the prosthetic leg, just below the knee, and it unlatches from the implant that's inset to attach it. He reaches in and takes out, yes, a bottle of vodka. "But if you would be so kind as to find me some glitter, then I'll give you an ill-advised New Year's gift," he says, holding the bottle up and leaning the leg against the chair before he uncaps the thing and takes a hell of a swig. He already looks like he's laughing.


Lolly stares at Czcibor, blinking, and suggests, "Getting something totally unpronounceable and Polish would be special. You pick, then tell me so I don't think you're sneezing." 

Innocent, innocent.

She nibbles on her lower lip, ducking her head and tucking a strand of lily white hair behind her ear. When her fingers bump the soft bells of yet another spray of flowers sprouting from her flipping scalp, she flinches, then mutters under her breath in Japanese.

"Um." She watches the prosthetic leg's removal with a mildly bewildered, "I didn't even know you -had- one. I just..figured you had a bum leg or something." Still, temptation is strong. She brightens at the prospect, dims and eyes her floors, sighs at them, then shakes her head in mild exasperation. After a moment, she declares a bold, "I'm already infected with microglitter. A little more won't kill me," and turns to dart out of the apartment, closing the door behind her.

She's gone for a little while, a good five minutes, and when she returns, she's slightly out of breath and frazzled, though she still smells sweetly of lilies. She also has a Ziploc baggie of glitter which she holds with two fingers, as though it were a nuclear weapon liable to go off at any moment.

The glitter, it must be noted, is silver. She is merciful. It will blend in with his normal 'skin' tone well enough.

"Sorry! I got grabbed by Bella and Princess. More weeping. Here's the, um. Stuff." She offers it out to him.


"Lilusianaskaneczka," he decides once Lolly's back, then smirks and says it more slowly as he puts the vodka back in his leg and puts the prosthetic back on. "Lee-LOOSH-ya-NOSH-ka-NECH-ka. Though I'll probably stick with Lilianka! If I'm trying to wheedle you into something your nickname will grow and grow and grow. Maybe even to mythical proportions."

Then Czcibor stands again and takes the baggie of glitter, regarding it like it's a live grenade and opening it will be taking the pin out. "Okay," he says, shrugging out of his jacket and draping it over the back of the chair. His face is a little pink, and it in all honesty, at this point, is probably ''actually'' the grog and the vodka and the whatever else New Year's Eve has brought him in the way of alcohol.

He looks up at Lolly and chews on his lower lip. "I have literally never even watched anyone do this. I mean except in passing while coming in here, and I wasn't paying attention. Am I supposed to go behind your screen and get undressed and put the glitter on and then put clothes on again and then come out and get undressed to music? Uhh, sexily?"


Lolly mouths the word while he says it, then tentatively repeats it once he slows it down for her. "You? Wheedling? What, if you ever really try to make me join that freehold thing?" She nibbles on her lower lip, stifling a laugh. "What on earth does that all -mean-?"

The glitter, and his reaction to it, elicit a stifled giggle before she shakes her head and suggests, "Just put it everywhere you could possibly end up touching me with it. That way you can make me suffer, too, if you give me a lap dance." She looks quite certain of herself. "That's what the girls say. For the customers who are mean pinchers, or kind of gross, or the ones they know are cheating on their wives, they cover them in glitter so they have to wash their clothes so hard before they can go home." 

Revenge of the Stripper: coming to a club near you!

As for dancing, the barely-legal young woman considers a moment, then grabs a scarf from the coat rack, wrapping it around herself. Blushing a pretty pink, she explains, "It's in the attitude, and in the torso. The girls, they...um. They think I'm cute, and anyway it was a quiet night so some of them were teaching me stuff backstage for fun." 

Ahhhh so much blushing. So much. 

Despite that, she holds up a finger, goes up on her tippy toes to pretend she's in heels, and proceeds to swish her suddenly slinky, confident and hip-swishing way toward him, hands toying with the scarf. She half-turns, sequined dress thereby highlighting the curves of hip, ass, AND fairly modest bust, tossing her hair and keeping an eye on him while undulating her body to an imagined beat and slowly drawing a hand down over her own breast and belly toward the inner join of thigh and pelvis, scarf lightly drawn with it, to pull his eyes lower.

The rest of the scarf is lightly looped around a hand for her to circle him with, and it's at about that point that she loses control, wobbling down off of her tiptoes with a thud and giggling herself silly. Pseudo-seduction officially over! "You can't, ha, you have to relax your spine. Have fun with it."


"No but if you have ice cream and I want some, I will most assuredly wheedle," says the Captain mock-stuffily, standing up straighter and looking absurdly pompous for a second. "Or chocolate," he amends, relaxing. "And that's literally all just diminutives piled on diminutives. Like an itsy-bitsy teeny-weeny yellow polka-dot bikini, instead of just a little one..."

Then she's stifling giggles at him, and he scrunches his face until she explains, aaaand... he still looks sort of mystified. Except the explanation apparently comes with a tutorial, so he's attentive! And studying her methods carefully, and looking more and more puzzled as she pseuduces him.

Lolly's giggling again and Czcibor just looks hopelessly embarrassedly lost. Well, sheepishly. It's not like he's mortified or anything. "I think I would squish you if I tried to give you a lap dance. Also does a lap dance even ''work'' the same way if a guy is doing it for a girl? I--" He definitely starts for-real blushing there. "I'm not supposed to ''grope'' you, am I? I thought I was just stripper dancing--! But even if I'm stripper dancing I don't have the same-- I don't have your--"

Czcibor gestures vaguely at Lolly's... assets... and looks anxious. "I mean okay I can try doing it that way... but... I'm also... oh my god let me just get this over with. Also, more alcohol. I will be a moment. Behind your screen. If you have anything especially ridiculous you would like me to dance my way out of wearing, now is the time to drape it over the screen."

The screen that he edges behind.


Lolly waves Czcibor off behind the screen, agreeing, "Drink. The less you remember, the better. Then I can remind you of all of the stuff you forgot. Just pretend I'm an attractive dude and you'll be fiiiine."

While he is beglittering and boozing himself up, the young club owner considers, then drags a chair out toward the middle of the floor's empty space so he'll have plenty of room to circle her. She pitterpatter darts over to fetch a silk one from a drawer, not exactly seasonal for going outside, but much prettier to dance with, and considers, then adds a kimono style lounging robe made of satiny material. It's white and black with red sakura blossoms.

Those draped over the top of the screen, she giggles behind a hand and goes to plop herself onto the seat. 

And waits.


"You just being an attractive guy wouldn't help!" wails Czcibor from behind the screen. "Aesthetically pleasing doesn't-- it doesn't mean sexual attraction! I am just as capable of thinking you're adorable as that Haruki is adorable! I-- I can be sexy and not mean it, but it's an asshole thing to do..." There is a pause here for literally chugging vodka. He is going to goddamn get plastered.

"Before I get drunk enough to do this and maybe forget to do it," he calls, slipping the provided clothing onto the other side of the screen, "I have something I need to tell you in the interests of honesty, something that I did, which even though it was necessary to keep someone very important from dying, makes me feel like a dick and I'm super guilty about it like a month later. But I'm only going to do it after you have the ability to say I'm your secret glitter stripper superhero or whatever it was."

There's muttering and the sound of cloth moving behind there, and some of the muttering is even comprehensible, though some of it is in Polish. The understandable bits are along the lines of 'can't even dance', 'fall on my face', 'can't there be ballroom stripping, i could do that maybe', and 'not even glitter can fix'.

"You didn't answer me about the lap dance bit! But it's moot because I'd squish you, right? You're very squishable. Well, less likely to squish you if I'm human me instead of tin soldier me..."


Lolly tries. Lolly tries SO HARD not to keep laughing. 

She fails.

"I don't know," she protests, struggling for control. "I'm, like, not the best judge of what's sexy and what isn't. If you've got great personality and a graceful wrist when you use chopsticks to dip sashimi, that's good enough for me."

The weird secret thing he references prompts a sobering frown, but also confusion, newly green eyes watching the screen in brief silence before she sort-of-questions, sort-of-states, "Okay..?"

"Um." Weird man. "You don't have to give me a lap dance. Just... you know. Get your dance on. It'd almost be better if you were creepy metal when you did it, but you seem more comfy without it, so..." The chair creaks as she sways back and forth in demonstrative ambivalence. "For the record, YOUR flowers are pretty cool, and if I have to be a fairy, making flowers sprout all over the place wouldn't be so bad."


"I'm equally uncomfortable either way, for entirely different reasons. But feeling things physically works a lot better if my nervous system is actually functioning," grumps the toy soldier from behind the screen. There's a moment of quiet while he fiddles with his phone, and then some music starts.

Well, okay, first it's All-Star because ''someone'' here is a troll. But then it stops amid snickering from behind the paper screen, and something really not much fucking better comes on; it's the Strokes/Christina Aguilera mash-up, 'A Stroke of Genius'.

When our dear Captain steps out from behind the screen, he's wearing trousers, for sure, and there's glitter on them because yes that shit gets everywhere. And he's wearing the kimono-thing. And he's wearing the scarf under it like a freaking ascot. And yeah there's glitter everywhere, and he looks dubious. When Christina starts singing over those Strokes chords, he postures, trying hard to look dramatically sexy, but it's not ballroom dancing with the appropriate rules that can be learned, it's improv and it's meant to be sexy and Czcibor's version ends up turning into what looks kind of like Napoleon Dynamite doing interpretive dance in slow motion as Kowal slowly undoes his ascot. If you want to be with me, baby there's a price to pay. I'm a genie in a bottle, gotta rub me the right way...

He's also blushing and refusing to make eye contact.


Lolly... uh, she just stares, then comments a vaguely uncomfortable-but-trying-SO HARD-to-accept-the-Scary-Fairy-as-a-person, "Functioning, right, that's probably a good idea."

Then there is music.

Then he comes out.

The babyFairest claps her hands over her mouth to hide delighted laughter, and ends up boggling at him as his improv continues, a blend of appreciation and amusement and some friendly, "You go, guy!" accompanying a steadily deepening blush.

Because really.

Rub me the right way...? He had to pick THAT song?



This isn't working ''this isn't working'' maybe she's blushing but Czcibor feels like an idiot because why the hell did he pick this song? He still tries-- ''come on, come on, come on set me free'' NO no '''''no''''' okay no he covers his face (which gets glitter all over it of course) and quicksteps with only one brief corrected stumble back behind the screen and Christina stops and something else comes on. Something that dances, the backing music itself dances, flowing like electric water in cascades of light. He comes back out from behind the curtain, face still red, blushing all the way to his ears, to the back of his neck, but at least the vodka's starting to hit, because his posture's a little looser. He bows his head and closes his eyes and waits.

https://youtu.be/S-UlX5peJBc

Remember. Remember what it was like when he could actually play soccer, when he was good enough, whole enough, to run and to move fast and fluid. Remember what it was like when he took those ballroom dancing classes in Vienna when he still had both his own legs, before his senses started to back off, before everything was pain and wishes, before everything and nothing hurt.

Remember what it was like when Zephirine taught him how to let go and become weightless, become air itself.

''Leave the past behind, just walk away.'' The man who looks all of twenty five, despite the scars visible even while he's clothed, begins to slowly lift one arm, face turning away from Lolly while still lowered. ''When it's over, and the heartbreak--'' and his arm comes up over his heart, the other hand holding the scarf at his side, and he starts to slide his fingers down the fold-over front of the kimono between the halves. His face is still turned to the side and down.

''--and the cracks begin to--'' With one swift and graceful movement, his hand comes down the rest of the way and lets the kimono spill open, obi undone in the same motion; at the same time, Kowal's young face turns to meet Lolly's, his eyes landing directly on hers, and there's a faint smile playing at the corners of his mouth. ''--'''show.'''''

For a moment he's mostly still, just standing there making eye contact and glittering at Lolly, as the voice echoes on a delay into the silence. Mostly still, because his shoulders are held back and the kimono's allowed to drift down, backwards over them, slowly spilling off of him and revealing exactly how many cracks there are. Glitter aside, his chest is not a pretty thing. It's certainly strong, muscular; it was certainly beautiful, once. That was before he'd been stabbed, impaled, shot, carved into, and hugged a cold iron shrapnel bomb to the chest of a Gentry with his own between it and the people behind him. It's a horrible scarred mess and he shouldn't be alive.

Thankfully, the pause doesn't last very long before the airy sparkling full-sound dubstep music kicks in and he's in motion, a good deal of his moves copied from just what Lolly showed him a little while ago (had to be impaled; some of the scars on the front have matches on his back); he circles her as the words repeat but the music is more of an emphasis, and when he stops with it for the breaks he's perfectly still, provocative or close but not both, not at first.

As it continues, as it goes from quiet and broken singing with wistful arpeggios behind it to the full synthetic wall of sound and back again, he progresses to slowly sliding the silk scarf over her eyes from behind her, loose and falling, just as a no-touch touch, to distract her from the fact that he's rapidly pulling his pants off. (There's a thump as he hops and almost trips.) But then he's coming back into view and letting the scarf drape around his own neck, and this is where she finds out he wears boxers with the Starfleet logo and the Vulcan salute printed on them, and god he's definitely getting glitter everywhere, and wow yeah those are athlete dude legs except for the half of one that's fake and right now glittery in its own right. (''just walk away when it's over'')

Finally he's slinking toward Lolly; he ends up on his knees in front of her, looking up, and he smells of vodka and aftershave and roses and greenery and ozone, despite his mask being strengthened, and his eyes are pretty and silver drunk and there's longing and ''grief'' behind them, but there's also a heady sense of confidence and self-control that's so terribly, terribly strong, and above and beyond it, a willingness to give and give and ''give''. He lifts his glittery hands with the ends of the scarf in them, and one hand reaches up to very ''very'' lightly touch the side of Lolly's face, ghost at the idea of cupping it; both hands then come down to place the ends of the scarf in ''her'' hands. There's a beautiful smouldering raw ''heat'' to him, born of his presence and strength of character and his seriously exfoliant personality -- (''and the heartbreak and the cracks begin to show'') -- and born of what too much Spring for far too long has done to him.

The song is trailing off, and that's where he stops, and all the confidence flees and he looks ''made of uncertainty'', looking up at Lolly anxiously like 'did I do it right?'


Lolly has the easy part. Or... does she? When your history is being bared to a near-stranger, aren't you owed a certain measure of respect? Of witness, silent or otherwise, to all the (broken) pieces of being put on display?

Well, even if Czcibor isn't 'owed' it, he gets it.

Shock, at first, eyes widening in sympathetic pain at the sheer number of wounds he bears, and shock is followed soon thereafter by more attention given to the dance itself, because holy moly.

...however.

One must ask the question.

Is a strip dance a 'good' strip dance when it ends up making one's audience cry..? When he finally looks up at her at the end, two lovely tears are rolling down across her creamy green and freckly cheeks, and regardless of the Glitter Danger or, evidently, the fact that he only has one good leg and may not be able to adjust his balance all that easily, Lolly half-slides, half-lunges out of her rickety old chair to wrap her arms around his neck and sniffle. At least she always smells nice?

"Beautiful!" All the feels. Thankfully, none of them are the usual response to strippers...


He does wobble, and his eyes definitely widen, but he's at least on both knees so he doesn't actually fall over, just OOFs along ''with'' the wobble. And he hugs her tight in return -- tight but not too tight, just human-tight, and he's otherwise relaxed, that anxiety bleeding out of him for the moment. His breath hitches a little, and he's silent, and he doesn't care anymore that he's only wearing his boxers, and he's grateful she let him keep them on, and he's just--

--he just holds that moment fast, just under too long. Just ''under''. There's nothing awful in it, there's just relief and that moment of understanding, and-- and then his breath hitches, and he lets go, and he sits back on his heels and reaches up to scrub at his eyes because his face is wet, and it only tracks more glitter there. And he's still drunk and fuzzy, and maybe that's why the relief is giving way to miserable guilt.

"If... I mean... you try to help when you can with everything you've got to help with. And if... you saw someone you were trying to protect from monsters... if you saw them running away because they were panicking, and you saw them running toward something else that was going to kill them... and you had a, a thing, an ability, a bit of magic... something you hated having but once upon a time you thought you needed to have... a piece of magic that would let you ''save them'', would you use it? If they were going to die, and it... it was a magic that let you ch-change their mind-- only for a little while, just long enough to get them out of danger, get them to safety... if you had that magic would you use it? To save their life?"

He's looking at her and he's ''pleading'', he's-- "I know... it's a rationalization. That it was necessary. And that it was temporary. And that it prevented people from dying, or-- or worse. All that's true. But it was also a violation. And it's-- even after everything-- it's maybe unforgivable. And it's a horrible thing to tell you now. But it's a thing I wanted to tell you while-- while you could hurt me. In lots of ways. A thing I wanted to tell you while you were-- okay, and while I was vulnerable, and-- and once maybe you saw what's... me. More of me. Of history that's not just story." He's earnest, certainly; all that presence of personality and he is literally on his knees in front of her, nakedly covered in glitter and scars, and miserably raw like faerie monsters ''just don't get''.


Lolly doesn't say anything about the glitter. I mean, why would she? It's everywhere. The infection is impossible to escape, so she doesn't even try.

She does, however, give him a quizzical look when he pulls away and starts talking about guilt.

Arms withdrawing from around his neck, she settles back with her hands in her lap to kneel more comfortably, motions casual and easy. Kneeling is something familiar. Hearing Czcibor talk about using mind control powers...not so familiar, and increasingly uncomfortable, especially once she makes the connection, somewhat belatedly, that he is talking about -her-.

Those tears start up again, eyes wide and hurt and, yes, betrayed. She hiccoughs a little in-drawn breath, then springs up to her feet and fetches something from a cabinet near the rickety old table which serves as her 'dining' area, bringing back a bottle of Angostura bitters. 44.7% alcohol by volume, hers are not diluted. No, this is a bottle of extremely concentrated, bitter booze with none of the other ingredients it is normally mixed with in cocktails.

For her? Nope. 

For him.

Definitely for him.

The younger woman thrusts it out at him, tearful, firm, and demands, "Drink it. All of it. No cheating and making yourself not taste it, either." Assuming he takes it, she sniffles, once, eyes wide and wounded, and tells him, "I'll have your word, too, that you won't use anything to rinse the flavour out of your mouth, or ease the hangover tomorrow, and if you barf up your toenails all over my floor, -you- are cleaning it."


It might be gratifying that he flinches when she springs to her feet; it might be gratifying that he flinches harder when she comes over so forcefully with that glass bottle full of alcohol. Then again, it might not. He's covered in glitter like her girls, and he's on his knees and mostly naked on the floor, and the glitter's in trails down his faces and smudged around his eyes.

When she doesn't break the bottle over his head, he looks up, slowly un-bracing for the impact that never comes, and his gut's churning because she's crying again and it's his fault again, and worst worst worst, that look of ''betrayal'' in her eyes. But he reaches to take the bottle, surprised at her demand. She's going to punish him instead of kicking him out, cutting him out, cutting him off.

It's ''probably'' gratifying that he gets this look of ''AUGH'' on his face when he sees what's in the bottle, followed by vast resignation. "Okay," he says in a small voice. "And... you don't need my word I'll never use it on you again. But you have it anyway, if you want it." He twists off the top, then takes a sip, and ''holy shit what a face''.

"...I... I need my pants on to drink the rest," he says, eyes red rimmed, but voice firm. Mostly firm. There's a wobble at the very end. He starts getting really carefully to his feet, having to set the bottle down on the floor so he can balance without spilling it.


Tear-smudged glitter is, unfortunately, something she has seen entirely too much of this evening, as she mentioned earlier.

No sympathy! 

...okay, maybe a little, but she nibbles on her lower lip and firms her jaw, strengthening her resolve when he makes that face.

Still, she doesn't do heartless or mean very well, because she totally rushes to admit a sniffly, "I kind of figure if I make you suffer hard enough, it'll be super memorable and remind you why you should be good next time."

Also, she hurries toward him to help him get up to his feet, and she doesn't even seem to notice that a bit more of his glitter has stuck to her skin.


"Thanks," he mumbles in response to the help. And then he sniffles and hates himself for it a little, and scrubs at his face again, and then shuffles over to reacquire his jeans, which he very very carefully pulls on, hand on the back of Lolly's chair while his weight's on the fake leg. "I don't think even the bitters is as bad as what I know the look on my mom's face would be if she knew. But she doesn't even know I exist. My brothers can't tell her."

He zips up his pants and feels like he has a little bit of dignity, then steps back to pick up the bottle, face screwed up into a look of wretched awful. "This shit is like chewing on kale and burnt coffee mixed with Alanis Morissette songs."

He takes a swig and coughs violently, face squinched up almost to pug proportions. And then he slinks behind the paper screen to acquire his shirt and pull it on over all the fucking scars. Glitter everywhere forever. His shirt, for the record, is a Red Hot Chili Peppers tour shirt, and when he comes back out, he does his best to chug as much as he can.

Three seconds later, he's gasping and waving his hand in front of his face. "AND A MOXIE CHASER. UGH UGH ugh ugh ghuuuuhhhh..."


"I don't know which is worse. Haha and chichi being gone is awful, but...if your mother is still out there, and you can never speak to her again..." D'aww. Compassion. It really should qualify as a flaw. 

Speaking of which, while Czcibor is busy choking on 45 alcoholic awful, Lolly is padding barefoot across the floor toward the fireplace to add another log, a spray of sparks rising into the air from the half-burnt wood already glowing there. That done, she sets the tools away and goes to pull a sleeping bag and a mattress pad out from under her bed, along with some extra blankets, and starts padding a nice comfy spot by the warmth of the fireplace. It is, notably, a modest distance from her bed.

She watches him, brows slightly furrowed. "Keep drinking. You're not driving anywhere tonight."


"I wasn't-- khhk-- I wasn't planning on it," slurs Czcibor frustratedly, glaring at the bottle. "I was planning on turning into air and going home and getting glitter everywhere and throwing up in my own bathroom. And it's both my parents. Both. They're both alive and I can't see them except when I dream-visit my fetch and he lets me see his recent memories of them, except... except he hasn't been able to for a little while and I'm worried because what if something happens to him?" He chugs another few seconds of the shit and regrets it every cycle of those seconds, then involuntarily full-body shudders and drops into the chair Lolly vacated.

"He's still texting... maybe he can't get a good night's sleep... but he's looking after them, and after our brother who can ''see'' and who knows about us ''both'', and if anything happened to any of them I don't know-- I don't know what I would do," oh god he's a sad drunk. Or maybe he was just already sad. He's crying again, for the love of god. And he punishes himself for it by having another swig. He's making good progress on that shit. Cue another full-body shudder.

"Lost too many people... too many... ones I loved, ones I liked, ones who never did anything to deserve the shit I couldn't save them from..." He leans forward in the chair, resting his forehead on the heel of his hand, slur-mumbling his woes. "Dunn matter how many I try to... what I give away or, or let people take from me... keep losing them. Some of them did turn into monsters. Stopped trying. Just... just lost themselves, turned into the shit that did this to us..."


Lolly considers her impromptu bed, then turns down the covers, taking one of the blankets and tucking it a bit nearer to the fireplace to heat it. He'll have a nice -warm- bed. Cinderczcibor.

"Are they all back in, um." Where did he say he was from again? The differently-flowery Captain flounders briefly, then gives up and concludes, "in Europe?"

A quick trip across the room lets her carry the other chair over to plunk it beside his so she can attempt to awkwardly pat his arm in comfort, a sweetly-scented, albeit greenish warmth at his side. "More monsterish than John? He's...pretty scary."


"He's not a monster," the altogether too squishy tin-man says almost disparagingly, "he's just got a stupid amount of power and a fucking huge ego. I'm talking about ''actual fairies''. The Gentry. True Fae. The Others. The Keepers. The ones who take normal human people to fairyland and turn them into ''us''. The ones who are actual fucking monsters. The ones who ''used'' to be human, ''used'' to be people, and ''aren't'' anymore." He scrubs angrily at his face again, smearing glitter into his hair because his wrist slides up accidentally and mooshes it that way; wow his motor skills are gonnnnne.

And he takes another hefty swig and almost chokes on it, then spends like ten seconds grimacing after he gets it down. "Poland. They're in Poland. Wroclaw. My fetch got the foo-- the soccer career I was gonna give up to stay home and help my folks after the accident, but he's a good guy-- he's so good-- it's not his fault... and... and he had to retire after the last World Cup anyway... we're too old. Well. He's too old. I'm too... I'm too broken. But he was in-- all the World Cups from 1998 to-- to 2014. And in Slask Wroclaw. Such a good player..."


Lolly watches her Stripper Glitter Hero get himself even more thoroughly plastered, patting his shoulder again in consolation, and .. pauses, staring, to repeat, "They...so people really CAN go all the way? You mean I wasn't wrong?" Alarmed, she blurts, "What's stopping John from going monster?? Do people -watch- him? How can that be safe??"

Ah, fear.

It is, thankfully, outweighed by the recent memories of all the places Czcibor has been cut or exploded or stabbed, if the way she drops her eyes to his chest at the reference to 'broken' is any indication. "I, um. I'm horrible at soccer. My parents wanted me to participate in extracurricular sports so I would form a strong moral character and team spirit, but no one really wanted me on their team. Except badminton."

Why she is ashamed of playing badminton is unclear, but she's certainly blushing.


"You could-- would compl-- would so hard kick my ass at badminton," laughs the Pole into his hand, somewhat wetly. He scrubs at his face again and laboriously sits up, and the room is spinning. "Everyone is watching our Vorusekczyk. And he is very-- he is lots of willpower, to be not that. He is a protector. He protects. He just-- took a position-- two-- is in the Harvestmen, a Lieutenant, to keep the Freehold safe from monsters outside, a thing I am doing too? And one that is-- if people are in the freehold and sliding away, slipping away, to start to turn into those things, and nothing else is to be working for them, it is his job to make them be not that, to help them to remember they are people and people do not do things Gentry. A good man. Just too much of ego and power." He keeps talking, but it slips from there into Polish, and then he eyes the bottle, and he determinedly chugs the rest of it.

And it falls out of his hand at the right angle to bounce instead of shatter, and it bounces and rolls even as he's cringing so hard away from his face like he thinks he can excise his mouth. "Boz moj, to najgorsza rzecz jaka kiedykolwiek wlozylem w ustaaaa..."


Lolly agrees, still blushing but nodding nonetheless, "I would completely kick your ass at badminton, and probably at soccer too, right now. But that's the magic of extremely strong, extremely vile alcoholic drinks. You're only supposed to add a few drops of that one to stuff, so I thought, um, it would be a pretty good punishment for mind controlling me, even if you did do it to keep me safe." 

She does NOT offer him water. He gets to sleep with THAT taste in his mouth, and wake up even WORSE.

She does, however, stand up and cup his face between both smooth hands, leaning down to brush a kiss over his forehead in contented benediction. "I forgive you. Now let's get you up on your feet so you can suffer horizontally and pass out before you forget how to speak English." 

The younger woman pauses, then adds, "Remind me to ask you to teach me Polish," while turning to get a shoulder under his arm, bumping her chair out of the way with a combination of a foot and a hip so she can urge him up onto his -good- leg for balance purposes.


"Jest juz za pozno. Jestem wrakiem pociagu, a... dumpster fire," Czcibor says with a hiccup-laugh, looking up at Lolly with red-rimmed and bloodshot silver eyes full of apology and trust and altogether too much honesty to be healthy or safe. His face is warm, and glittery, and sticky with salt, and un-lined except for smaller scars here and there, and his stupid t-shirt says as much about him as the pattern on his boxer shorts, and when Lolly helps him up he doesn't protest. He tries not to lean on her too hard, because even in his Mask, he's muscular and well-built and tall and heavy.

Tries.

The room spins.

"...rzygac. Musze wymiotowac-- throw up--" Yes he is steering her away from the bed she made with some urgency. More urgency. Toward the toilet. A lot. Fast. Well, fast-ish, he's stumbling, and might be faster crawling, honestly.


Yep. Who gets to sleep in a great big room full of the smell of vomit? 

Both of them.

Or, rather, a great big room full of the smell of vomit and intoxicatingly lovely lily of the valley...which won't do Lolly nearly as much good as Czcibor's Mantle would do him. Sigh.

Lolly hastens to help him once she catches the interjection of actual, you know, intelligible words amidst his Polish. She also, for some reason not trusting him to navigate the screen himself, performs a twist and a careful lift-nudge-slide with one hand to get it out of the splash zone while ensuring he reaches the toilet as quickly as possible.

Oh, please, reach the toilet.






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