13339/Dancing in the Dark

Dancing in the Dark
Date of Scene:	11 November 2022
Location:	Last Exit
Synopsis:	Johnny Storm tests his sobriety by going to Last Exit, where he runs into a dancing Kitty Pryde.
Cast of Characters:	Johnny Storm, Kitty Pryde

---

Johnny Storm has posed:
Johnny Storm is putting himself to the test to some degree, but isn't that what he's supposed to do? He's already gone to public functions with booze, a dance club shouldn't require getting wasted to enjoy. Not that he has any actual experience to remember that, not since he was 21 and newly heroic and he was trying his first drink to wash down his first pills. He always did it in moderation and carefully, never wanting to sully the team's rep, never wanting to be a 'bad' role model. Just an outlet, now and then.

Then the last few years. The things he experienced, the horrors he experienced outside of space. He had been torn and reset and he'd never felt quite right. So he had done more, drank more, partied more. Lost his focus. Lost his cool, ironically enough. Crashed and burned.

But he lived and here he was and god dammit, he could still have a good time without getting wasted. Right?

"This was a really dumb idea," he says to himself, putting his hands on his hips. He's wearing a pair of black trousers and a stylish button-down in blue, with suspenders, his cuffs unbuttoned and rolled up a bit. "But ain't they always?" he grins, "I'm back, baby!"

Kitty Pryde has posed:
It is dark inside the club as one might expect, almost a tribute to the music being played. The LED lights flash like lightning running along circuits, giving flashes of the dancing throng. Bodies bouncing and gyrating together, at once separate from another yet a part of the whole as the crowd is caught up in DJ's energy. A deep souled beat that tries to permeate everyone and everything in the crowd. Enticing them to move to it. To flow to it. To surrender and drift away from whatever cares they had before coming to the Last Exit.

One of those many out on the dance floor is Kitty Pryde. The brunette has left her hair to fall lose about her shoulders. She is wearing a skirt and a vest, pinstripes like a high end suit, but that leave her shoulders, arms and midriff bare. Heels do not seem to be giving her any difficult as she dances in the crowd.

A flash of the lights run across the ceiling, illuminating her for a moment before fading to leave her again in the dark sea of bodies moving one against another. Another flash, this one a deep neon blue that strobes briefly before fading away.

Johnny Storm has posed:
Johnny Storm remembers the face. The gala, not so long ago, the one he'd ducked out of early. He'd felt like a fraud that night, more frayed than he'd wanted to pretend. But he'd gotten his courage the old fashioned way this time, by working out way too much, paired with boxing practice. He had focused himself on learning to fight hand to hand, as his flame powers were often simply too dangerous to use against milder civilian threats and he wanted to be able to help defend his friends and family without risking burning an ordinary attacker alive. Only a fool would step near the flame, true, but there were millions of fools in the world. Johnny didn't want to hurt any of them more than he had to.

He's always been a fairly good dancer, by club standards. He was athletic and confident, he had a certain swagger and, as he lets the music start to catch and the beat begin to infect him, he finds himself drifting through the neon as well, a ship set sail. He even tries to throw in a moonwalk at one point and manages to pull it off, getting a few claps of surprise from some younger dancers who recognize the famous Johnny Storm. Here come the phones and, as he starts to turn away from them, he finds himself face to face with Kitty Pryde."

"Oh, uh...hi."

Kitty Pryde has posed:
Some guy moves up to dance against Kitty. He isn't too bad looking, but he could really use a better choice in cologne. Which is too bad. Kitty loves the smell of cologne on a man.

She gives him about ten seconds of dancing and then makes use of one of those random swirls of movement that opens up a space she can slip away through and he won't be able to follow. Her escape is right to the beat, the girl who wanted to be a professional dancer until life and a mutation took her another direction hasn't lost any of her moves. Though not being ostentatious, she draws eyes and there might be a few other people hoping to make a more successful move than Mr. Cheap Cologne did.

As Kitty makes it through that gap in the crowd, a flash of the lights goes by overhead, briefly illuminating a familiar face. One familiar not just for being famous.

Kitty Pryde breaks out in a very warm smile, and Johnny's mild greeting makes her add a warm laugh to it. "Johnny," she says, moving to hug the uncle of Franklin, one of her dear friends. "I didn't expect to see you out here," she says, leaning close to speak into his ear so he can ear her. She's wearing perfume, probably noticeable at that distance. "Saw you at the gala but didn't get a chance to talk to you," she calls to him.

Johnny Storm has posed:
Johnny Storm returns the hug, grateful for the familiar face and the excuse alike. He rapidly puts up his hand and assumes a defensive posture, turning back towards the photography assertively, "Okay, guys, I appreciate you, so much, thank you, but this young lady didn't ask to be on someone's Insta tonight, so please, just for me, take what you got and gimme a break, huh? Thank you, so much, I will come by your table later and sign anything you want. Yes. Yes, even those."

He turns back to Kitty, "Uh, I think we'd better dance or we're going to start blocking people off," he says. He does wear cologne, as any young man who was a teen in the 90s would have no doubt done, the James Bond model of appealing to women still popular and in style. Johnny had no idea how young musicians who looked like pieces of tattooed gristle continued to get beautiful women. It definitely wasn't their music. But then he knew just how old he sounded saying shit like that. Which is to say, he's wearing Calvin Klein, a fragrance the designer had gifted to him as part of a Christmas surprise after the FF had saved...

He had too many stories. He could tell them all night. And talk over the lovely young woman in front of him. Don't be a fool, Johnny. "I'm so sorry, I just didn't feel great and the photography...well, I'm just not crazy about the attention as much right now," he says, gesturing back towards the departing fans. Security has caught the hint and intercepted any other attempted interruptions. "You looked good. Who were you with, I didn't see?"

Kitty Pryde has posed:
As Johnny deftly diverts those searching for selfies, Kitty gives them a smile and a wave of gratitude. "Yes, great thing about a place like this is you go deep enough and pictures are about impossible," she says with a laugh, taking hold of Johnny's hand if he lets her, and moving back away from the edge of the crowd. Deeper into the morass of bodies that have given themselves over to the DJ's control. Moving about in that hedonistic fashion, letting the music spinner's beat guide them like chic, beautiful marionettes.

Kitty draws Johnny deep into the crowd and then slips her arms around his shoulders to dance close and let his presence ward off any of the men that otherwise might have tried to worm their way in against her.

"Mmm," Kitty says into Johnny's ear. "Calvin Klein? God I love that," she says, fingers brushing his shoulder as she leans near to be heard. "And I understand how you feel. I don't get a lot of cameras pointed my way anymore... Warren and I broke up a year ago. But for a year I got the smallest taste of what the last twenty years of your life have been like," she calls to him in commiseration. "Roberto da Costa, an old classmate, had asked me to the gala. But it's just me alone tonight, slipped off to get away," she tells him. "Dance with me?"

Johnny Storm has posed:
"I thought I already was," he says with a rakish grin. He's got that slightly grizzled hint of shadow thing along the jawline, but he's so finely blonde, it doesn't show much except up close. He keeps moving along with the music, the kind of sharpened techno-pop that just hints at industrial sometimes, although all the screaming came from tousle-haired women usually in diaphamous undergarments. Not that Johnny was complaining. Good for dancing, not what he'd listen to at home.

"I think I heard something about the break-up. Warren never seems to mind those photohounds following him around," he says. "Can't say I know the guy, but if he's got your seal of approval, I'm sure he's a gem. But a gem that didn't want to come dancing tonight? Or you just feel like flying solo? Believe me, I've been there, more than I ever imagined."

Kitty Pryde has posed:
Kitty Pryde moves along with Johnny, the young woman excellent at following his lead. Though in this case she keeps her arms about his shoulders, the crowd forcing her close to his rugged form so it's even easier to just let herself go. Let his movements guide her slimmer body and his arms protect her from the crowd that surrounds them.

The young woman speaks into Johnny's ear, words for him alone. "It was an amicable enough split. Still had feelings, just Warren needed to be off running a company and I had working at the school plus getting my own IT consulting practice going. Was rough, not being together as much as we wanted so decided maybe our timing just wasn't right," She tells him. "But he's wonderful. Heart of gold. A real 'Angel'," she says, unable to avoid the bad pun using his hero name, "even if we didn't work out."

The song changes but the beat goes on. "I wanted to go out alone tonight. Maybe meet someone, who knows?" she says, leaning back so she can look at Johnny easier than when she's talking into his ear. "What's the point of being single if you don't go out and enjoy it, right?"