At first, I had assumed that the bartender would be capable of pouring the drink I had ordered minutes prior. It became evident fairly quickly that this would not turn out to be the case, as a pretty woman at the other end of the bar rose higher on his priority list than my request. Our dollars had the same monetary value, but certainly she offered him far more than I ever would dream of. That is, unless my legs had better muscular definition and looked better in a dress. Who is to say that this wasn't the case, though? If the women who slipped into some slinky number and shook what their momma gave them around the bar could pull off a dress, surely someone with a fantastic physique could do the same! Gender biases be damned. When the arbitrarily humorous thoughts began to subside, my request for a drink was taken on by someone other than the bartender. Perhaps she would appreciate me in a dress. With something reminiscent of a scoff, I turned to look at her instead of glowering at the inattentive bartender who probably should have looked familiar.

"Look at that, a professional!"

When the bartender finally acquires my drink after the brunette flags him down, I couldn't quite take a sip of it until thanking the woman. After all, it was her feminine wiles that won me my alcohol, and for that I would reward her with a slow smile and my pointed attention.

"Now, now; let's not be hasty. Just because you're a show off doesn't mean you get to buy me a drink."

The tease was good natured, somehow. It wasn't like me to be in an infectious mood much past my bedtime as it were, especially given the circumstances of my prior evening. But with a voice I had grown accustomed to rising above the din of the bar, I could no longer pretend I was going to sit in the bar and brood. I hadn't noticed the familiar slope of his shoulders as he had somehow slipped under my generally astute radar, his claim that the drinks were on the house had me grinning brighter. The tequila, on the other hand, I spun around in it's glass once before raising it to the woman.

"There, now we can pretend I did the chivalrous thing and paid for drinks on an anonymous tab."

Finley's appearance had raised the bar of the extent of my humor for the evening. With a flourish of my hand and an ambivalent shrug, I waved off the idea of me in a dress.

"You're jealous because you have no hips, Sasquatch."

My crystalline gaze fell on my fondly on my brother as he was admonished for his existence behind the bar. That's it, boy, the Dorian M.O.: Inconvenient, obnoxious, and self-serving. With a smirk, I nodded a hello to the acquaintance of my brother before returning my attention to the woman who had been assaulted with a barrage of Dorian exuberance.

"You'll have to excuse both of us. We're often not allowed in public together. Perhaps you'll find some redeeming qualities in either of us this evening, though we're both extraordinarily understanding of intolerance."