[ He sing-songs it, slipping along the sidewalk like moonlight over water, ducking a tight right-turn down a narrow alley that dripped with moisture and was rank of mold. Two men smoking in the recess of a doorway looked up at their passage... and then down again, to their own murmured conversation.
Asra ignored them. He'd been right about one thing: it was indeed within stumbling distance of the hotel where new Submissives were being kept. Past a few flickering or dead streetlamps, a ramshackle building with a crumbling facade covered in layers of poorly-executed tagging and spraypaint art. The name, 'Smog Cutter' had been fashioned out of rusted car and motorcycle parts, hung like an ominous machine over the heavy, windowless door. The one window not boarded up had a blinking neon light which advertised only, 'cold beer'.
Asra was so distractingly a fish out of water in such a setting that he seemed almost luminously bright against the darkness, and the glow of the neon cast lurid tones over his skin as he knocked on the door. A few bolts slid aside on the door's other end, and the door was cast open by a lean, weasel-faced man with short, greasy black hair and black tattoos crawling up his neck, cleaning out a glass with an off-color rag. The bartender.
'Two usuals?' he offered with a laugh, pausing his cleaning of the glass to throw an arm around Asra, waving the two in... shooting a curious look at Julian, looking him up-and-down as if trying to place him in his memories.
All the other patrons-- and there weren't many-- had echoes of the same tattoos as the bartender, black designs crawling up their necks. One brawny man in a denim jacket leaned back to wolf-whistle appreciatively at the trio as they passed. Asra only laughed, and slipped up to the bar which the bartender stepped behind, hopping onto a stool too tall for his height, and patting the one beside him. ]
That's right, two usuals! But... mm, put some ice in mine. Julian, this is Getty, Getty-- Julian.
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[ He sing-songs it, slipping along the sidewalk like moonlight over water, ducking a tight right-turn down a narrow alley that dripped with moisture and was rank of mold. Two men smoking in the recess of a doorway looked up at their passage... and then down again, to their own murmured conversation.
Asra ignored them. He'd been right about one thing: it was indeed within stumbling distance of the hotel where new Submissives were being kept. Past a few flickering or dead streetlamps, a ramshackle building with a crumbling facade covered in layers of poorly-executed tagging and spraypaint art. The name, 'Smog Cutter' had been fashioned out of rusted car and motorcycle parts, hung like an ominous machine over the heavy, windowless door. The one window not boarded up had a blinking neon light which advertised only, 'cold beer'.
Asra was so distractingly a fish out of water in such a setting that he seemed almost luminously bright against the darkness, and the glow of the neon cast lurid tones over his skin as he knocked on the door. A few bolts slid aside on the door's other end, and the door was cast open by a lean, weasel-faced man with short, greasy black hair and black tattoos crawling up his neck, cleaning out a glass with an off-color rag. The bartender.
'Two usuals?' he offered with a laugh, pausing his cleaning of the glass to throw an arm around Asra, waving the two in... shooting a curious look at Julian, looking him up-and-down as if trying to place him in his memories.
All the other patrons-- and there weren't many-- had echoes of the same tattoos as the bartender, black designs crawling up their necks. One brawny man in a denim jacket leaned back to wolf-whistle appreciatively at the trio as they passed. Asra only laughed, and slipped up to the bar which the bartender stepped behind, hopping onto a stool too tall for his height, and patting the one beside him. ]
That's right, two usuals! But... mm, put some ice in mine. Julian, this is Getty, Getty-- Julian.