Log: Turn's End
Summary: Skinner comes to the tavern to find a celebration and eventually he gets one.
Location: The Lucky Seven, Ista Weyr
Date: 6-24-09
Skinner flings himself through the double doors and slams a hand back, propping a door that doesn't need any propping. It's already open. "Hellooo, June!" he calls out, his voice booming. It doesn't make a difference to him whether the room is filled to the brim with celebrants, late this Turn's End night, or manned by a skeleton crew; in fact, he probably doesn't even notice. The man's not steady on his feet. "And /girls/," he adds even more enthusiastically, though it hardly seems possible.
The tavern he barges into is, in fact, not manned at all, unless one counts the jumble of tables, chairs and benches that have yet to be properly placed as a working staff. Skinner won't have to wallow in the dimmed glowlight for long, for those girls he called have conveniently good timing tonight. Their voices can be heard coming down the path a matter of minutes later, a racous bird call composed of laughing, calling and snippets of a bar tune, heading away from the Weyr celebrations that Skinner might have just come from himself. Chidiree is the first through the door, wondering under her breath if they left it open, but she's not the first to spot their new visitor; Livi gallops up behind her, shouting song lyrics and grabbing at her sister's shoulders for stability, and when she looks in she drunkenly declares, "Skinn-er!" The rest of the seven aren't far behind, Valenia, Danta and Petra all arm in arm, June and Ruesse trailing by only a step or two. "Well look who's here," Petra says, and June does, asking Skinner lightheartedly as she pushes into the room, "What exactly are you doing?" She seems the soberest of all of them, at this point.
How disappointing. It takes a minute for Skinner to believe the place is actually empty, and he stares in confusion at the jungle. But then! Noise! He turns around to watch the girls come in, and when Livi greets him he throws out his arms for her. "Hey!" he calls back, and plucks her away from her sisters for a few wobbly but enthusiastic dance steps to the tune of the song she was just singing. "Livi, my love, how good to see you. Huh?" The others are talking to him. Process words, then grin at June. "Just stopping by to join in the fun. I know you're not open, but, /hell/, no party?" He flings up his hands in dismay and strides through the tangle of furniture. People could be here! Instead there's just Skinner, tottering around.
"You have to have people to have a party," June explains as she, with a pilfered wine bottle in hand-- okay, maybe she's a little drunk-- makes her way to a bench and slides onto it, leaning her elbows onto a table behind her. "To have people, you have to be open." So simple and logical a fact that's probably wasted on him now, as Livi steals the lead from him and tosses him into what's supposed to be a ballerina twirl, all the while keeping a cadence with her slurred lyrics. With a heave, Petra playfully sends the girls linked to her arching into the room, prompting laughing shrieks from both Valenia and Danta, the former skittering away and landing next to June on the bench. "We partied in the caverns instead," the younger redhead explains for him, "told everyone about the party /we're/ going to be having soon. You're going to be there right?"
Skinner goes along with the ballerina twirl without hesitation, though with considerable stumbling. When he stops twirling, he turns into Livi and lifts her up, turning her around in the air. She's considerably taller than him, but he's stronger than his wiry frame suggests, or drunk enough not to notice how hard it is, whatever. Either way, he manages for a full turn and a half, then sets her down and drags her towards him to dance cheek-to-cheek. "Can always invite your most special friends," he says, right in Livi's ear if she's going along with him. "But of course I'll come to your next party, Val." Hiccup. "Enia! Wouldn't miss that for the world," he concludes in philosophical tones, and attempts to swoop Livi down.
Livi has to hunch a bit to make that cheek-to-cheek thing work, but she makes it work. The image of it all causes Chidiree to break into a fit of giggles that breaks over the top of Skinner's answer to Val. "This is why you can't dance with men. You look ridiculous," Chidiree tells Livi, who then protests that, "I can too dance!" She's going to prove it, too, by making that swoop the most dramatic swoop she's ever done. A mistake, to be sure, in her condition. She swings up again with a groan and a dizzy sidestep, leaning on Skinner more than before. "Okay, I can't dance," she relents with a sodden little laugh, then adding in a louder voice, projected at the bar, where Chidiree's headed, "but it's not because I'm tall, dammit!" Chidiree laughs off her sister's words and goes about poking around the shelves behind the bar with a confused little frown. She knew where things were this morning. "Who wants a beer?" she calls out to the rest of them while she pushes aside this and pulls out that. June, Valenia and Petra all claim that they do.
"Hell, no," Skinner chimes in with Livi, loudly defending her ability to dance. Er. At least in theory. Her leaning into him causes him to lean as well, but with no one to catch him he just goes tipping back, dragging Livi with him because he doesn't have the presence of mind to release her. He /does/ have instincts enough to catch himself before falling, but it was a nice little scare he just gave her, all the same. By way of apology, he plants a loud kiss on Livi's cheek. "Sorry, doll." And then, because he's learned nothing from his near-fall, "Bring us a beer!"
Livi's short scream of surprise bounces off the ceiling, followed by her roar of laughter after she's caught and still standing, joined by hearty giggles from the others. "Maybe we should sit down," she suggests, but Ruesse is having none of it. From her spot, across that table from June's back, leaning forward, chin on folded arms, she replies dryly, "No, no, keept dancing. It's much more entertaining for the rest of us." Chidiree finally finds the beers then, and, with five balanced between her fingers, she makes the rounds, depositing them. Skinner is last. "So what were you up to tonight?" she wonders, her voice lacking the casual disdain she normally uses on him. She's just curious. If he's answering, though, she'll cut him off with her sudden realization, bleary eyes studying him up and down. "You look weird." And with that, she swigs.
Skinner takes a hearty swig of his beer, then holds it out for Livi with an inviting waggle. See, she didn't ask for beer, but when he said 'us' he was being literal. "I was -" interrupted. He gives Chidiree a crooked grin, then detaches his front from Livi's so he can treat them all to a good look at his clothes. They're normal! They fit! He pats his chest. "Look good, don't I? You like it? I'm dressed to impress these days, good old good-looking Skinner." He turns back to Livi with a hum to set the mood, down a notch from their earlier flailing, and begins to sway her to some rhumba music.
It's Livi's weakness, social drinking, so she can't resist that beer waggle; she takes and tosses back a long, slow drink. "You look weird," Chidiree repeats, retreating with her beer to sit in Valenia's lap, one arm tossed around her sister's neck. Livi drapes herself against the sway of Skinner's body, going along by default as she steals drinks over his shoulder from the bottle she's now hogging. "What did you do tonight?" Petra returns them to the original thread of conversation, taking Danta by their locked arms and directing them to a table across the impromptu dance floor from where the other girls sit. They pull themselves onto it, feet dangling in near-unison.
"Trader party!" Skinner crows, throwing in a little whirl that might interrupt Livi's drinking. All he does is spin her around, though, so perhaps not too badly? "Went to the caravan clearing just -" he waves an arm, gesturing somewhere beyond Livi's shoulder. "Up that way." Close enough that June and her sisters are probably aware of it, and probably aware that the traders stop there fairly often. "/That/ was a party. Drinking, dancing -" his hand's still over Livi's shoulder, but now he's flopping it at the beer bottle, trying to get it back. "They even fed me," he adds belatedly, and in quite the cheerful tune.
"Ooh," Livi groans mid-whirl, fighting her draping inclination and pushing out of the dancing embrace. "No more," she insists weakly, even handing over the beer to Skinner's questing hands before she staggers away from him altogether, veering over to join Petra and Danta on the table. Only she doesn't sit, she flops back and lays flat, one hand pressing back her hair. "You're a lucky bastard," June tells him with half a laugh over a paused drink, and Petra adds, "Yeah, the caverns were kind of lame." That sparks protests from Valenia, who thought the party was just fine, but they agree to disagree before the arguing goes too far.
"You know your business," Skinner concedes merrily, taking a deep swig from his bottle. Between him and Livi, the thing's already empty after that, but he doesn't ask for a replacement. Just belches, loudly, in tune to one of Valenia's more sweeping steps. Then he starts laughing - more like hooting - and lets his empty roll away.
"Damn straight," June replies, toasting to that fact with a little lift of her beer, a sight that may be impeded as Chidiree trips on one of those waltzing steps and causes their dance to careen off course. Valenia, overcompensating for the slip, whirls them around and ends up backing them into the very table Skinner's on top of. She and Chidiree stay there to laugh over their blunder, each one supporting the other in a haphazard embrace, the table supporting them both. "Speaking of business," June continues on, the pragmatist even when soused, apparently, "I heard that Loe tried to lure you into some negotiations. Or something."
Skinner gets tossed a bit when they ram into his table, rolled onto his side right after the beer bottle. He crawls back into place and hauls himself upright, scooting over to sit next to Valenia and throw a companionable arm around her shoulder. (Chidiree's too, after a fashion, but she's farther away.) "You both dance beautifully. But not as well as the lovely Livi," he says, and lifts his arm from the two younger girls to offer his erstwhile companion an imaginary toast. He beams at June. "She did, she did at that. Offered me a better space but she wanted waaay too much money for it." Trying to get them to share in his surprise at how much money (so much money!) Loe wanted, he turns a wide-eyed look on the girls next to him.
"So I heard," June muses as she peers down the mouth of her beer bottle curiously. "It's too bad. It's a good location. Not that we wouldn't want a neighbor down here, but." She shrugs and tips her beer back for a quick guzzle. Valenia is drawn in and meets his wide gaze by one of her own, asking, "How much money?"
Skinner's eyebrows bounce up when his phrase causes such amusement in the room. "What?" he asks, unsubtle in his drunken haze. Flinging an arm around the tired Valenia's legs, heedless of her personal space, he lifts his chin on top of her ankles and uses them to hold his head up while he peers around. "What'd I say?" He looks at Chidiree first, but Livi last and longest, as perhaps his former dance partner will be the most likely to take pity on poor, left-out-of-the-joke him.
The pity's to be hand in Chidiree, actually, though it's probably less motivated by pity than by mocking when she repeats, "You want to have a go at it with her?" while leaning over him, one hand perched on the edge of the table keeping her aloft. "You going to do it right there in her office, I guess?" She keeps up the innuendo, prompting more laughter, but from fewer of her sisters, all except the nearly passed out Ruesse and Livi. "It'll be long, I expect," Petra chimes in with a straight face, though Danta nearly dies laughing at it. "Hard." "Could take two tries," June contributes, covering her self-satisfied laugh with a swig from her beer.
Skinner joins them in the laughter, his hand tightening around Valenia's ankle because he might just fall off the table, otherwise. "Damn right I'd have a go at that. Long as she doesn't try to charge me for that, too." Chidiree made a naughty joke at his expense, now it's her turn to suffer one. And not just the joke: Skinner reaches out and slaps her butt, sitting so temptingly close to him on the same table. "Anyway, /right/ in her office," he continues happily. "What do you think, she likes it kinky? Up on her desk? Leg over her head?" He grabs Val's leg and pulls it over /his/ head, to demonstrate, and though there's no effort made to look down her skirts, there's certainly a danger that he /could/. Well. Were they not so ruffly and full.
Valenia just doesn't /care/ at this point whether or not Skinner can see past the fluff of her skirts; she's just so tired. Even her beer is uncared for, encircled by a hand, but unmoving in its spot on the table. Chidiree still has enough energy left in her, though, to act offended at the butt slap. With a gasp, she draws back and deal him a sharp thump against the side of his head. "No touching," she tells him, then flounces a step further down the table's edge, leaning there out of his arm's reach. For now. "Who knows what she likes?" June answers meanderingly, almost bored with the topic, though most likely it's just her trying to keep her speech together. "We don't do women." Study them, pinpoint them, actually do them. "Well, most of us don't," she adds, keeping from implicating any of her sisters in particular by pinning her smiling gaze on Skinner himself. He might turn to the others, but he won't find many clues there; excepting Livi and Ruesse, they're all exchanging looks with each other, laughing drunkenly. Valenia giggles a giggle that jiggles the legs under his chin.
"You don't /do/ them," Skinner responds, "but don't tell me you don't /know/ them." His head's been thumped, and he's holding it to keep it steady (becayse boy does that make his vision wobble) but he manages to keep a sloppy grin in place despite it all. He looks after Chidiree's departing butt, then tucks himself into Valenia's ankles with a tiny chuckle. Curious, now: "Would you turn them down if they asked? And offered to pay?" He has to tilt his head at quite the angle to find June, situated as he is currently, but he does it for this question.
The rest of the room's eyes turn to June, too, or at least the rest of them that are paying attention to the train of conversation. June considers him, letting the mouth of her beer rest against her lower lip. "No," she finally answers quite frankly, easily as if she were deciding whether or not she would turn down a free sandwich from a stranger. "But I haven't had a one ask me yet." "I have," Petra pipes up before downing the rest of her beer and setting it with a thunk on the other side of Livi, who groans in response. "Me too," Danta contributes, slumped against Petra's shoulder. "Guess I'm just not a woman's type," June says, slipping her beer up for another sip.
Skinner keeps his eyes on June until she's answered, but then it becomes too difficult. He straightens out with a happy sigh as he gets comfortable. Oh, and takes Valenia's leg off his neck. That's been there long enough. But he gives her ankle an appreciative kiss, chaste as you please, for putting up with it in the first place. "I'd ask you, if I were a chick," he tells Petra and Danta (just one of them? Or both?) helpfully. "Ah well. I'll just have to guess when I hit that." Good thing Chidiree's moved away, although he's forgotten about it already; his hand waves in the area where her butt was, finding only empty space, and gives up limply.
"You could ask us if you weren't a chick," Petra reminds him, pinning him with her dark, heavy-browed gaze. Danta joins in the staring, too, though hers is lighter, a simple, bleary look squinted over some lingering chuckling. He's surrounded by drunken whores with marks to spare, though, what could he expect? "Oh, don't pester him," Valenia protests, lifting her head to draw her sisters' eyes. When she's succeeded, it falls to the table again with a gentle thud. "Ow," she mutters, then to Skinner, "You can do what you want with your marks. They're yours and you can do with them whatever you want. Don't let them bother you, they're your marks." Her hand reaches over and pats his calf, soothing imagined ruffled feelings.
His feelings aren't hurt, but Skinner still pats Valenia's calf in return, once again thanking her for the concern. "Thought I'd already put that one to bed, eh?" He pinches one of Val's toes and gives it a wiggle, to help her get into the spirit of the joke. It's a pun! Puns are /funny/. "Got no need to pay, and anyhow, no marks on me tonight." It's his own thighs he slaps this time, and there's no answering clatter of coins. "Wouldn't want anyone taking advantage of me while I'm drunk-k." He toys with that K as it comes out.
Valenia finds the toe-tweaking funnier than the pun and, in addition to the short squeal, she gives him a sudden wriggle of all of her toes at once. Petra shrugs, unsettling Danta's lean for a moment, a swift indication that she doesn't care. "Just saying," she tells him. "We don't have to be hypotheticals." "You're always so subtle and understated, Petra," Danta comments, her voice smooth and deliberate, before returning to her normal quiet. "We're not the take advantage type, anyway, now, are we girls?" June puts in, a question that's answered by a ripple of gentle laughter.
When Valenia laughs so enthuastiastically, what can Skinner do but join her? Of course, his laughter comes without any wriggling or squealing, so it's a little less fun. "Not to worry, doll, I know you're not. Hypothetical," and to his credit, he only mumbles the word a little, drunk though he is, "or take-advantage. Y." Because he's not together enough to think of a better word to rephrase that idea. He snorts. "Anyway, how's about another beer, somebody? Take pity?" He's too comfortable on Valenia's legs to get it himself, so he'll just wait patiently to see if anybody else takes up the suggestion. One way or another, he'll keep babbling drunken things at them to keep the party going.
Location: The Lucky Seven, Ista Weyr
Date: 6-24-09
Skinner flings himself through the double doors and slams a hand back, propping a door that doesn't need any propping. It's already open. "Hellooo, June!" he calls out, his voice booming. It doesn't make a difference to him whether the room is filled to the brim with celebrants, late this Turn's End night, or manned by a skeleton crew; in fact, he probably doesn't even notice. The man's not steady on his feet. "And /girls/," he adds even more enthusiastically, though it hardly seems possible.
The tavern he barges into is, in fact, not manned at all, unless one counts the jumble of tables, chairs and benches that have yet to be properly placed as a working staff. Skinner won't have to wallow in the dimmed glowlight for long, for those girls he called have conveniently good timing tonight. Their voices can be heard coming down the path a matter of minutes later, a racous bird call composed of laughing, calling and snippets of a bar tune, heading away from the Weyr celebrations that Skinner might have just come from himself. Chidiree is the first through the door, wondering under her breath if they left it open, but she's not the first to spot their new visitor; Livi gallops up behind her, shouting song lyrics and grabbing at her sister's shoulders for stability, and when she looks in she drunkenly declares, "Skinn-er!" The rest of the seven aren't far behind, Valenia, Danta and Petra all arm in arm, June and Ruesse trailing by only a step or two. "Well look who's here," Petra says, and June does, asking Skinner lightheartedly as she pushes into the room, "What exactly are you doing?" She seems the soberest of all of them, at this point.
How disappointing. It takes a minute for Skinner to believe the place is actually empty, and he stares in confusion at the jungle. But then! Noise! He turns around to watch the girls come in, and when Livi greets him he throws out his arms for her. "Hey!" he calls back, and plucks her away from her sisters for a few wobbly but enthusiastic dance steps to the tune of the song she was just singing. "Livi, my love, how good to see you. Huh?" The others are talking to him. Process words, then grin at June. "Just stopping by to join in the fun. I know you're not open, but, /hell/, no party?" He flings up his hands in dismay and strides through the tangle of furniture. People could be here! Instead there's just Skinner, tottering around.
"You have to have people to have a party," June explains as she, with a pilfered wine bottle in hand-- okay, maybe she's a little drunk-- makes her way to a bench and slides onto it, leaning her elbows onto a table behind her. "To have people, you have to be open." So simple and logical a fact that's probably wasted on him now, as Livi steals the lead from him and tosses him into what's supposed to be a ballerina twirl, all the while keeping a cadence with her slurred lyrics. With a heave, Petra playfully sends the girls linked to her arching into the room, prompting laughing shrieks from both Valenia and Danta, the former skittering away and landing next to June on the bench. "We partied in the caverns instead," the younger redhead explains for him, "told everyone about the party /we're/ going to be having soon. You're going to be there right?"
Skinner goes along with the ballerina twirl without hesitation, though with considerable stumbling. When he stops twirling, he turns into Livi and lifts her up, turning her around in the air. She's considerably taller than him, but he's stronger than his wiry frame suggests, or drunk enough not to notice how hard it is, whatever. Either way, he manages for a full turn and a half, then sets her down and drags her towards him to dance cheek-to-cheek. "Can always invite your most special friends," he says, right in Livi's ear if she's going along with him. "But of course I'll come to your next party, Val." Hiccup. "Enia! Wouldn't miss that for the world," he concludes in philosophical tones, and attempts to swoop Livi down.
Livi has to hunch a bit to make that cheek-to-cheek thing work, but she makes it work. The image of it all causes Chidiree to break into a fit of giggles that breaks over the top of Skinner's answer to Val. "This is why you can't dance with men. You look ridiculous," Chidiree tells Livi, who then protests that, "I can too dance!" She's going to prove it, too, by making that swoop the most dramatic swoop she's ever done. A mistake, to be sure, in her condition. She swings up again with a groan and a dizzy sidestep, leaning on Skinner more than before. "Okay, I can't dance," she relents with a sodden little laugh, then adding in a louder voice, projected at the bar, where Chidiree's headed, "but it's not because I'm tall, dammit!" Chidiree laughs off her sister's words and goes about poking around the shelves behind the bar with a confused little frown. She knew where things were this morning. "Who wants a beer?" she calls out to the rest of them while she pushes aside this and pulls out that. June, Valenia and Petra all claim that they do.
"Hell, no," Skinner chimes in with Livi, loudly defending her ability to dance. Er. At least in theory. Her leaning into him causes him to lean as well, but with no one to catch him he just goes tipping back, dragging Livi with him because he doesn't have the presence of mind to release her. He /does/ have instincts enough to catch himself before falling, but it was a nice little scare he just gave her, all the same. By way of apology, he plants a loud kiss on Livi's cheek. "Sorry, doll." And then, because he's learned nothing from his near-fall, "Bring us a beer!"
Livi's short scream of surprise bounces off the ceiling, followed by her roar of laughter after she's caught and still standing, joined by hearty giggles from the others. "Maybe we should sit down," she suggests, but Ruesse is having none of it. From her spot, across that table from June's back, leaning forward, chin on folded arms, she replies dryly, "No, no, keept dancing. It's much more entertaining for the rest of us." Chidiree finally finds the beers then, and, with five balanced between her fingers, she makes the rounds, depositing them. Skinner is last. "So what were you up to tonight?" she wonders, her voice lacking the casual disdain she normally uses on him. She's just curious. If he's answering, though, she'll cut him off with her sudden realization, bleary eyes studying him up and down. "You look weird." And with that, she swigs.
Skinner takes a hearty swig of his beer, then holds it out for Livi with an inviting waggle. See, she didn't ask for beer, but when he said 'us' he was being literal. "I was -" interrupted. He gives Chidiree a crooked grin, then detaches his front from Livi's so he can treat them all to a good look at his clothes. They're normal! They fit! He pats his chest. "Look good, don't I? You like it? I'm dressed to impress these days, good old good-looking Skinner." He turns back to Livi with a hum to set the mood, down a notch from their earlier flailing, and begins to sway her to some rhumba music.
It's Livi's weakness, social drinking, so she can't resist that beer waggle; she takes and tosses back a long, slow drink. "You look weird," Chidiree repeats, retreating with her beer to sit in Valenia's lap, one arm tossed around her sister's neck. Livi drapes herself against the sway of Skinner's body, going along by default as she steals drinks over his shoulder from the bottle she's now hogging. "What did you do tonight?" Petra returns them to the original thread of conversation, taking Danta by their locked arms and directing them to a table across the impromptu dance floor from where the other girls sit. They pull themselves onto it, feet dangling in near-unison.
"Trader party!" Skinner crows, throwing in a little whirl that might interrupt Livi's drinking. All he does is spin her around, though, so perhaps not too badly? "Went to the caravan clearing just -" he waves an arm, gesturing somewhere beyond Livi's shoulder. "Up that way." Close enough that June and her sisters are probably aware of it, and probably aware that the traders stop there fairly often. "/That/ was a party. Drinking, dancing -" his hand's still over Livi's shoulder, but now he's flopping it at the beer bottle, trying to get it back. "They even fed me," he adds belatedly, and in quite the cheerful tune.
"Ooh," Livi groans mid-whirl, fighting her draping inclination and pushing out of the dancing embrace. "No more," she insists weakly, even handing over the beer to Skinner's questing hands before she staggers away from him altogether, veering over to join Petra and Danta on the table. Only she doesn't sit, she flops back and lays flat, one hand pressing back her hair. "You're a lucky bastard," June tells him with half a laugh over a paused drink, and Petra adds, "Yeah, the caverns were kind of lame." That sparks protests from Valenia, who thought the party was just fine, but they agree to disagree before the arguing goes too far.
"You know your business," Skinner concedes merrily, taking a deep swig from his bottle. Between him and Livi, the thing's already empty after that, but he doesn't ask for a replacement. Just belches, loudly, in tune to one of Valenia's more sweeping steps. Then he starts laughing - more like hooting - and lets his empty roll away.
"Damn straight," June replies, toasting to that fact with a little lift of her beer, a sight that may be impeded as Chidiree trips on one of those waltzing steps and causes their dance to careen off course. Valenia, overcompensating for the slip, whirls them around and ends up backing them into the very table Skinner's on top of. She and Chidiree stay there to laugh over their blunder, each one supporting the other in a haphazard embrace, the table supporting them both. "Speaking of business," June continues on, the pragmatist even when soused, apparently, "I heard that Loe tried to lure you into some negotiations. Or something."
Skinner gets tossed a bit when they ram into his table, rolled onto his side right after the beer bottle. He crawls back into place and hauls himself upright, scooting over to sit next to Valenia and throw a companionable arm around her shoulder. (Chidiree's too, after a fashion, but she's farther away.) "You both dance beautifully. But not as well as the lovely Livi," he says, and lifts his arm from the two younger girls to offer his erstwhile companion an imaginary toast. He beams at June. "She did, she did at that. Offered me a better space but she wanted waaay too much money for it." Trying to get them to share in his surprise at how much money (so much money!) Loe wanted, he turns a wide-eyed look on the girls next to him.
"So I heard," June muses as she peers down the mouth of her beer bottle curiously. "It's too bad. It's a good location. Not that we wouldn't want a neighbor down here, but." She shrugs and tips her beer back for a quick guzzle. Valenia is drawn in and meets his wide gaze by one of her own, asking, "How much money?"
Skinner's eyebrows bounce up when his phrase causes such amusement in the room. "What?" he asks, unsubtle in his drunken haze. Flinging an arm around the tired Valenia's legs, heedless of her personal space, he lifts his chin on top of her ankles and uses them to hold his head up while he peers around. "What'd I say?" He looks at Chidiree first, but Livi last and longest, as perhaps his former dance partner will be the most likely to take pity on poor, left-out-of-the-joke him.
The pity's to be hand in Chidiree, actually, though it's probably less motivated by pity than by mocking when she repeats, "You want to have a go at it with her?" while leaning over him, one hand perched on the edge of the table keeping her aloft. "You going to do it right there in her office, I guess?" She keeps up the innuendo, prompting more laughter, but from fewer of her sisters, all except the nearly passed out Ruesse and Livi. "It'll be long, I expect," Petra chimes in with a straight face, though Danta nearly dies laughing at it. "Hard." "Could take two tries," June contributes, covering her self-satisfied laugh with a swig from her beer.
Skinner joins them in the laughter, his hand tightening around Valenia's ankle because he might just fall off the table, otherwise. "Damn right I'd have a go at that. Long as she doesn't try to charge me for that, too." Chidiree made a naughty joke at his expense, now it's her turn to suffer one. And not just the joke: Skinner reaches out and slaps her butt, sitting so temptingly close to him on the same table. "Anyway, /right/ in her office," he continues happily. "What do you think, she likes it kinky? Up on her desk? Leg over her head?" He grabs Val's leg and pulls it over /his/ head, to demonstrate, and though there's no effort made to look down her skirts, there's certainly a danger that he /could/. Well. Were they not so ruffly and full.
Valenia just doesn't /care/ at this point whether or not Skinner can see past the fluff of her skirts; she's just so tired. Even her beer is uncared for, encircled by a hand, but unmoving in its spot on the table. Chidiree still has enough energy left in her, though, to act offended at the butt slap. With a gasp, she draws back and deal him a sharp thump against the side of his head. "No touching," she tells him, then flounces a step further down the table's edge, leaning there out of his arm's reach. For now. "Who knows what she likes?" June answers meanderingly, almost bored with the topic, though most likely it's just her trying to keep her speech together. "We don't do women." Study them, pinpoint them, actually do them. "Well, most of us don't," she adds, keeping from implicating any of her sisters in particular by pinning her smiling gaze on Skinner himself. He might turn to the others, but he won't find many clues there; excepting Livi and Ruesse, they're all exchanging looks with each other, laughing drunkenly. Valenia giggles a giggle that jiggles the legs under his chin.
"You don't /do/ them," Skinner responds, "but don't tell me you don't /know/ them." His head's been thumped, and he's holding it to keep it steady (becayse boy does that make his vision wobble) but he manages to keep a sloppy grin in place despite it all. He looks after Chidiree's departing butt, then tucks himself into Valenia's ankles with a tiny chuckle. Curious, now: "Would you turn them down if they asked? And offered to pay?" He has to tilt his head at quite the angle to find June, situated as he is currently, but he does it for this question.
The rest of the room's eyes turn to June, too, or at least the rest of them that are paying attention to the train of conversation. June considers him, letting the mouth of her beer rest against her lower lip. "No," she finally answers quite frankly, easily as if she were deciding whether or not she would turn down a free sandwich from a stranger. "But I haven't had a one ask me yet." "I have," Petra pipes up before downing the rest of her beer and setting it with a thunk on the other side of Livi, who groans in response. "Me too," Danta contributes, slumped against Petra's shoulder. "Guess I'm just not a woman's type," June says, slipping her beer up for another sip.
Skinner keeps his eyes on June until she's answered, but then it becomes too difficult. He straightens out with a happy sigh as he gets comfortable. Oh, and takes Valenia's leg off his neck. That's been there long enough. But he gives her ankle an appreciative kiss, chaste as you please, for putting up with it in the first place. "I'd ask you, if I were a chick," he tells Petra and Danta (just one of them? Or both?) helpfully. "Ah well. I'll just have to guess when I hit that." Good thing Chidiree's moved away, although he's forgotten about it already; his hand waves in the area where her butt was, finding only empty space, and gives up limply.
"You could ask us if you weren't a chick," Petra reminds him, pinning him with her dark, heavy-browed gaze. Danta joins in the staring, too, though hers is lighter, a simple, bleary look squinted over some lingering chuckling. He's surrounded by drunken whores with marks to spare, though, what could he expect? "Oh, don't pester him," Valenia protests, lifting her head to draw her sisters' eyes. When she's succeeded, it falls to the table again with a gentle thud. "Ow," she mutters, then to Skinner, "You can do what you want with your marks. They're yours and you can do with them whatever you want. Don't let them bother you, they're your marks." Her hand reaches over and pats his calf, soothing imagined ruffled feelings.
His feelings aren't hurt, but Skinner still pats Valenia's calf in return, once again thanking her for the concern. "Thought I'd already put that one to bed, eh?" He pinches one of Val's toes and gives it a wiggle, to help her get into the spirit of the joke. It's a pun! Puns are /funny/. "Got no need to pay, and anyhow, no marks on me tonight." It's his own thighs he slaps this time, and there's no answering clatter of coins. "Wouldn't want anyone taking advantage of me while I'm drunk-k." He toys with that K as it comes out.
Valenia finds the toe-tweaking funnier than the pun and, in addition to the short squeal, she gives him a sudden wriggle of all of her toes at once. Petra shrugs, unsettling Danta's lean for a moment, a swift indication that she doesn't care. "Just saying," she tells him. "We don't have to be hypotheticals." "You're always so subtle and understated, Petra," Danta comments, her voice smooth and deliberate, before returning to her normal quiet. "We're not the take advantage type, anyway, now, are we girls?" June puts in, a question that's answered by a ripple of gentle laughter.
When Valenia laughs so enthuastiastically, what can Skinner do but join her? Of course, his laughter comes without any wriggling or squealing, so it's a little less fun. "Not to worry, doll, I know you're not. Hypothetical," and to his credit, he only mumbles the word a little, drunk though he is, "or take-advantage. Y." Because he's not together enough to think of a better word to rephrase that idea. He snorts. "Anyway, how's about another beer, somebody? Take pity?" He's too comfortable on Valenia's legs to get it himself, so he'll just wait patiently to see if anybody else takes up the suggestion. One way or another, he'll keep babbling drunken things at them to keep the party going.