Snippet #2424749

Craig didn't seem too eager to get an eyeful of lingerie-clad St. Mark Claus, which Jack really couldn't fault the dude for-- shit, he couldn't imagine how anybody could maintain a semblance of self-confidence after seeing the sheer magnificence encapsulated in that single image. Men and women alike would look upon the glory of it, and never again would they be able to so much as glance to the mirror, unable to bear the reality that no matter what make-up, accessories, or body modification they underwent, they would never achieve that level of utter gorgeousness.

Well, either he wasn't too eager, or his band leader had just about beaned him upside the head with a key card. One or the other.

His old mate shoved the card into his pocket, just in time to hear Jack extol the loveliness of his Santa-hood, and laugh in cruel mockery. "Yeah, I'm sure," he remarked with no dearth of sarcasm. "Especially with the beard."

At the mention of the beard, the bassist seemed to seize up briefly, as though reminded of a horrifically traumatising event in his past, before his face fell. "The beard... it... I was..." Jack struggled to speak, every word forcing him to relive the horror of a time he sought with every fibre of his body to forget, but at last, he could no longer maintain composure. Overcome with despair, he attempted to sink into the arms of his guitarist, a plan which ingloriously failed as Alex simply side-stepped out of the way and watched Jack crash to the ground.

"Jesus, Alex," the bassist grunted as he scrambled back up to his feet, looking up to her with betrayal and pain evident in his eyes. "I see now where my loyalty and friendship gets me from the Lord of Fever herself-- naught but the cold rejection of the ground!"

"Lord Fever has no time to bother with the inane trivialities of her lowly subjects," Alex retorted in a voice so icy cold it would have chilled to the bone even the denizens of the northernmost tundras of Siberia.

"See?" Jack insisted, turning back towards Craig. "Fuckin' evil. Anyway, about my beard. Around that time I just happened to've broken up with a certain girlfriend of mine who was both none too pleased with the whole spectacle and also well aware of the might of the beard. I don't think I need to extrapolate from there, but let's just say there was a reason I was so drunk."

"But that also reminds me..." Craig trailed off, turning from Jack now to the guitarist, who raised an eyebrow. "Why do you have that saved on your phone?"

And without missing a beat, without the slightest shift in expression, Alex simply replied, "Blackmail materiel."







Edei seemed deeply amused with the less than pleasant meeting between Cormac's forehead and the key card, though she didn't come off as quite as entertained by the way her own shot right over her head like a damn bullet, skittering into the wall on the other side and necessitating that she get off the couch and retrieve it. Cormac would have smirked at the way she muttered under her breath about Izzie's evident pitching skill, if not for the fact that the smarting pain on the front of his noggin wasn't a testament to that. Then again, Izzie struck Cormy as more of a 'batter' sorta person, but hell, he was anything but the most well-versed individual when it came to baseball.

When Edei returned, key card in tow, the long-haired dude was answering a question Cormy figured Edei musta asked while he was on the ground in agony. "You're right," he remarked with a smile. "I've been in a lot of different projects and bands since I was pretty young, so I've toured quite a bit, even with Legion." Ah, Cormy discerned sagaciously, proud of his powers of comprehension. She must've asked about touring. This knowledge would undoubtedly aid him greatly as the guy turned the question back on them.

Edei, of course, lunged to answer first. "My first tour. Ever. I was mostly studio work before I was invited by the lovely and oh-so-talented Izzie to join Psychosis." She fell silent, looking to Cormac, who took that as beck for him to speak his piece, which he began with a shrug of his narrow shoulders. "The only band I was ever involved in prior to this was a punk band, so... we didn't really tour so much as occasionally play in people's garages, y'know." He didn't wanna up and say it was also his first tour-- that'd just make him look like a fuckin' inexperienced... whatever, y'know? Okay, even he didn't really know, but he did know it would make him look bad.

None too eager to let the subject linger on that note, Cormac hastily added, "Hey, what'd Izzie say about playing some card type shit?" Now, there, he was in good shape. Card games? Man, Cormy'd fuck a fool up. Yu-Gi-Oh, Pokemon, Magic: The Gathering, man, that shit was his fuckin' jive.







For her part, Izzie was already on her way out.

She'd stepped towards the elevator, only to find Raisa, in what was probably about as much as could be expected of her, pounding frantically at the close button even as the doors were shutting. Izzie stopped, raising an eyebrow, before the two doors met, and away the drummer went. Most other folks and Izzie would have assumed-- most likely, not incorrectly-- that they were in a rush to avoid ending up in a small, close-quarter environment with her, but then, you could never really guess at the motives of Raisa Trelstad, so Izzie didn't bother trying. She just took her shit, waited for the elevator to come back, and went on her merry way.

Quiet. Eerily quiet-- that was the first thing Izzie noticed as she stepped out of the elevator onto her floor. Her brow furrowed. How deeply unsettling. She was used to the kinda hotels where every door you walked past brought a new sound-- laughter, crying, raised voices, a cornucopia of lives playing out just out of sight. Here, though? Fuckin' nothing. Silence at every door. She found it strangely morose. It was the kinda lifeless hotel where people went to be alone and reflect on years long since past-- it was that kinda silence.

Somewhat concerned that a serial killer might leap out of one of the doors with a knife (which was pretty much always a concern to her-- and a fucking valid one, dammit, especially with Raisa and Edei both lurking about this place), Izzie stepped cautiously until she reached her door, fumbling the key card into its slot and waiting until the lock turned green. She pushed open the door, toting along her belongings, and stepped into what was home for the next few days.

A single bed furnished in the same dark red of the carpet it stood on was located at one end-- across from it, a television on a stand. A bathroom to her immediate left. On the far wall across from her, a glass pane through which filtered the last vestiges of the sinking sun, affording a gloriously depressing view of the star as it set beneath the horizon. Not that Izzie paid a whit of attention to any of that: she simply cast aside her luggage, dropping it where she stood, and stepped further into the room. As she did, she reached to remove the leather jacket encasing her body, tugging the ancient article off and tossing it haphazardly to the floor.

How very drab.

In fact, just to spite it all, Izzie decided, in possibly the most un-punk 'fuck this shit' motion ever undertaken (Cormac would have been deeply disappointed), to read. She had brought a number of books along with her, figuring on spending most of the time not spent actually gigging during this tour shut up in her room either reading, or drunk. Or both simultaneously. Camus' The Stranger took on some real fuckin' trippy undertones when read fresh off a bottle of jack.

Alas, she didn't have a bottle of jack on hand, but she did have her books, and that would suffice. She took one up, perched herself on the bed against the wall, donned her reading glasses, and allowed herself to become a part of the silence of the hotel.