Get Well Soon (closed)

[ChaoticLove]

He was right, she did like it. She'd never been in a place that went the whole nine yards with retro. Scooting into the booth, she smiled over at Shadow. Vixen laughed as he performed his trick. As he sild fifty cents to her, she looked through the songs and picked out Let the Good Times Roll.

"How is it that you know all these great little restaruants?" she asked softly. She didn't eat out much, since it was never really fun when you were by yourself.

 

[DrStein]

Shadow laughed at that. "I auditioned for every single one of them. My first six months back here in the States were spent trying to get more money for bigger shows. Most of them didn't hire me, but I still keep coming back to the ones I liked." He briefly looked around and smiled at the decor. "I make it a point to keep up-to-date on any and all venues worth visiting in this town." He took a pair of laminated menus out of the condiments rack and handed one to Vixen. "If you're looking for a recommendation, the pancakes with eggs and hashbrowns is the most popular breakfast here."

 

[ChaoticLove]

"Pancakes sound great," she said as she took the menu. Looking through it quickly, she figured she would go with the popular meal. "So six months was all it took to come up with enough money for bigger shows. I'm impressed," she said with a soft smile.

 

[DrStein]

"At the very small cost of completely kneecapping my social life," Shadow drawled with a roll of his eyes. "When I got back into the country I was still using a fake passport. I had about 50 bucks to my name, so I really had to bust my ass." Those were difficult times. He had already grown accustomed to being poor thanks to years of living in poverty and then being a globe-trotting vagabond. But he managed to knuckle down and pull himself out of the gutter.

"Gotta say... I don't regret the work I did to get here. But holy shit was that a lonely 6 months." He took Vixen's hand and kissed it softly. "Of course, here we are now."

 

[ChaoticLove]

"I might never have met you if you hadn't gone through all that you have," she told him with a soft smile, "It's probably a bad thing for me to be thankful that one of your illusions went wrong, but I kind of am."

 

[DrStein]

At that Shadow let out a chuckle that slowly turned into a laugh. After a few seconds of that though, his wound began to hurt and he placed a hand to it as the laughter died down to giggling. "If you can't laugh at yourself," he muttered off-handedly. "Shouldn't do too much of it though. No point tempting fate." The smile never left his face, even during the brief twinge of pain.

 

[ChaoticLove]

"It's easy to forget about it," she told him, not for the first time.It was that simple movement that made her realize the reason behind it, his expression never changed. "Have I mentioned how glad I am that you asked me out?" she asked, changing the subject.

 

[DrStein]

"I believe so, yes," Shadow said in reply. "But I like hearing it." A waiter came by and they placed their orders. As soon as the waiter left, Jailhouse Rock came on. Shadow started lip-syncing and acting out many of Elvis's iconic gestures from the waist up. He actually did softly sing out, "Everybody on the old cell block was dancin' to the jailhouse rock!" His singing voice was low and raspy, conjuring up images of a troublemaker.

 

[ChaoticLove]

Vixen laughed softly at Shadow's antics and shook her head slightly. She could almost imagine him in jail and breaking out into song. "You are definitely an Elvis fan," she told him with a laugh.

 

[DrStein]

"I have a thing for rock and the singer/songwriter types. Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, Warren Zevon, Ronnie James Dio, Glenn Danzig, Mike Patton, David Bowie... There's something about the individualist spirit that strikes a chord with me." He momentarily recalled a time in Germany when he spent a week sleeping on the couch of a heavy metal bassist. Outside of the Florida metal scene from the 80's and 90's, the guy hadn't listened to much American rock and metal. By the time Shadow had left, he was addicted to rockabilly and American balladiers.

"What about you? Anything in particular that gets inside you?"

 

[ChaoticLove]

She thought about it for a second. "Musicals..." she told him with a slight shrug, "I love musicals, though I've never gotten a chance to see one as a play. My favorites have always been the older movies. First one I ever saw was Singing in the Rain. And I've never been able to pass up a musical since."

 

[DrStein]

Shadow smiled at that. "There's going to be a production of 'Man of La Mancha' downtown next month." His smile turned into an ironic smirk. "I could be persuaded to, say... pull a few strings and get us free tickets."

 

[ChaoticLove]

"Really?" she said, her eyes lighting up at the thought of going, "You know...I'd do just about anything for you if you'd take me." She would, but it wasn't anything that she wouldn't have planned on doing without the encouragement of going to her first live musical.

 

[DrStein]

"Fortunately, I'm too much of a gentleman to interpret, 'I'll do anything,' as a blank check for douchebaggery. We'll work out the details later." At that moment, their food arrived. Shadow was happy to put the conversation on hiatus for a moment. His doctor had told him to take his painkillers on a full stomach. With a plate of French toast, hashbrowns and sausage in front of him, that was a prescription he wasn't about to refuse.

 

[ChaoticLove]

"I figured you would be," Vixen told him with a rueful smile. She turned her attention to her food as well. Pancakes were one of, if not, her favorite breakfast foods. With a soft hum of delight, she poured syrup onto the fluffy stack and prepared to dig in.

 

[DrStein]

The look of that smile caught him a little off guard. "Disappointed? I mean, if you're into the kinky stuff, I'm down with that. I just have a rule of thumb: Whenever someone offers to do anything, I will not make any demand crazier than sex in public unless I know they'll be cool with that. Technically, we met less than 48 hours ago. Not a lot of time to know just how wild you're willing to go." He said all of that with the kind of casual tone as if he was discussing the weather.

 

[ChaoticLove]

Vixen paused at his words and looked up at him. "Not disappointed. I'm not really sure about being into the knikier side of things, never have trusted someone else enough to even try most of it. And you're right it's not a lot of time to know that. We'll both figure it out at somepoint," she told him. Her tone probably hadn't come off quite as casual as his, but it wasn't like she had been trying to keep it that way either.

 

[DrStein]

"Never tried it? Well then word of advice: be very careful what you agree to if you ever meet someone in an Italian nightclub. That was a very educational and frightening six hours." Shadow gave his head a little shake as if to clear the memories. He punctuated the act with a little laugh. He glanced back at Vixen, wondering if perhaps his attempts at being lighthearted were going in the wrong direction. She seemed like a very open-minded girl, but everything he had seen in his travels left him very difficult to shock or disturb. Every now and again he forgot what was too far.

 

[ChaoticLove]

"Good to know," she said with a slight nod and a soft laugh. The lightheartedness was not lost on her. Vixen caught his galnce but didn't know what to think of it. "I have to wonder what could frighten you though," she said with a soft smile, "I'm guessing this was early on in your travels."

 

[DrStein]

"What scares me?" He looked around quickly before leaning in and gesturing Vixen to do the same. "I'll tell you." He spared another glance around the restaurant before lowering his voice to a dramatic whisper. "Caricature artists. I think they're trying to steal my soul."

 

[ChaoticLove]

Vixen leaned in at his gesture and listened closely. When he finally answered, she couldn't help but laugh. "That's cameras that's supposed to steal your soul," she informed him through her giggles.

 

[DrStein]

"Oh really?" he asked in mock surprise. "I guess after the bullet catch fiasco, I'm pretty screwed then." At this point Shadow decided to stay quiet for a while and enjoy the meal. He did have one question though. "I forgot to ask. Where's your place? You look good in my clothes, but I figured you'd want to slip into something a bit more familiar after we're done here."

 

[ChaoticLove]

Vixen laughed softly at his words. "Pretty much. My apartment is across the street from Blooming Park," she told him. With that said, they lapsed into one of their comfortable silences as they both focused on enjoying their breakfast.

 

[DrStein]

When breakfast finished Shadow once again covered everything without a word. On the trip to Vixen's apartment, he switched out CDs and put in one that opened with a heavy metal track with symphonic arrangements and a female lead singer. "You like hard rock? Metal? I'm working on a show set to rock music from around the world. This disc has the set list. I try to listen to it a few times a day to keep me in the groove. No firearms involved this time."

 

[ChaoticLove]

Vixen didn't say anything as he paid, having a feeling that he perferred to do so. "I like it sometimes. It all depends on what it is," she answered, "And I'm glad about the no firearms. I would hate to have to see you in the hospital again as a patient." She hadn't even thought about the fact that some of his illusions were kind of dangerous. She knew that he practiced everything to death but sometimes that wasn't enough.