milliways_bar | (no subject)

Half-awake!Hyde is checking Elaine out from a table near the buffet, where he's desperately trying not to doze into his coffee.

'Cause Elaine ain't at all bad to look at.

Elaine knows this, but doesn't think much of her own beauty. It hasn't helped out very much in her life.

Still, one knows when one is being watched. Elaine peers over her book at this rather strange young man.

Hyde raises his chin in a sort of nod to the blonde babe. He also kind of smiles.

She's definitely not a skank, so he wonders if it's worth going over to talk to her.

Elaine decides that this particular young man will continue to stare until someone speaks, so she smiles and says, "Good day, young sire. And how do you fare this day?"

Hyde blinks. He's not used to being talked to like that.

"Uh...I fare well, fair Maiden of the Booth. And how does the barside weather tickle your fancy?"

Elaine tilts her head to the side inquiringly. "Well, the weather is rather cold, but it does not tickle anything at all, really." She is beginning to think that they are at cross-purposes. "My name is Elaine. And may I have your name, sire?"

Hyde gets up and comes over to her booth, where he sits down across from her.

"Hyde. Steven Hyde." Girls usually get the first name too. For some reason, he decides this girl deserves to have the shades off as well, so off they go - he clips them to the front of his shirt. "And you can have it as long as you want."

Elaine blinks. This person certainly has a strange way of putting things. "How long have you been in the bar?"

"Um, about a week, two weeks?" Hyde shrugs. "Not entirely sure."

He peers at her beverage of choice and his face lights up. "A chick drinking beer? Now that's special." He smirks and nods. "You're a rare breed."

Elaine laughs. "Well, where I am from, that is all we drink. I understand that is unusual for most." The beer is as dark as possible, and has the dregs on the bottom of the glass. That's how Elaine likes it. And it's good for you!

Hyde stares at the beer longingly before he looks back into Elaine's face. His eyes are a nice bright shade of blue, if a little bloodshot and puffy.

"Where're you from, man? Someplace medieval I'm guessing, where the let the chicks drink beer."

"The twelfth century. Astolat, in Britain. There are places where they do not let women drink beer? I do not think I should like that." It's about all Elaine drinks. "And where are you from, sire?"

"Well, it's not that they don't let them, it's that women have decided not to drink beer because society tells them it's not ladylike, or something stupid like that." Hyde shrugs and fiddles with the ring on his right pinky finger - it's got a fake eyeball on it.

"I'm from Wisconsin. There's lots of beer there."

Elaine stares at the eyeball-ring for a bit. Shaking her head, she says, "It isn't a matter of ladylike, I suppose, not for people in my time. The water was not terribly nice in my world."

And of course, Elaine also wipes her mouth on her sleeve when she eats, though she's been trying to break herself of that partcular habit.

Wisconsin. Elaine's brain puts the connections together rapidly. "Oh, I have heard of Wisconsin before, the angel who tends bar has been living there of late."

Hyde makes an expression roughly equivalent to the one in the icon. Really, it's the best way to put it.

"Wait a second, one of the angels here lives in freakin' Wisconsin?"

Elaine shrugs medievally. "It was his choice, I would rather see him stay here."

"Wow, man. Angels in Wisconsin." Hyde momentarily gets a blissed-out sort of look on his face before he focuses on Elaine again.

That ring, by the way, has a thick silver band and a brown eyeball. he's still fiddling with it, and looking Elaine over. He's realizing that he doesn't entirely know how to talk to someone like her, and it surprises him.

Elaine shifts uncomfortably. She is used to the odd appreciative glance, but this is a bit different. "So...are you Bound, Steven?"

"...Bound?" Hyde feels he should know the term, but his brain is in a bit of a fuzz right now.

"As in...stuck here, right?"

Elaine smiles. "Yes. Are you...'stuck here'?" She suppresses an urge to wave her hand frantically in front of Steven's face.

Hyde maybe picks up on this. "Sorry, man, I'm just waking up." He runs a hand over his face and quickly puts his sunglasses back on. What was he thinking, trying to speak this early in the morning without them?

Thaaat's better. "I'm not Bound. Found out recently when I went home and came back with one of my friends following me." He looks thrilled.

"I can see by your face that this was not an entirely pleasing circumstance," she says with a touch of humor. "There are a few people I would be very displeased to see here, myself."

"Oh yeah? Like who?" This gets Hyde off the hook long enough to dig a cigarette and his lighter out of his jeans. The lighter, 'cause it's fun to describe, is a silver zippo with a '40s-style redheaded pinup girl embossed on it.

"Well. I would not be pleased to see my nurse in here--the woman who raised me. She would not be pleased to see me reading and conversing with all sorts of strange men." She smiles, and then it fades. "And Lancelot, for another. I do not ever wish to see him again." She shudders at the thought.

Hyde eyes her. "Lancelot? You...huh." He lights up and takes a long drag, funnelling smoke out the side of his mouth.