Isabelle 'Izzy' Shaw (izzyshaw) wrote in birthrightrpg, @ 2020-12-02 18:56:00 |
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Entry tags: | brianna winters, gabe santorini, ~izzy shaw |
Who: Izzy, Brianna, Gabe
Where: Dino’s lounge, Las Vegas
When: Friday after Thanksgiving
Dino’s was an old school unpretentious dive bar, the sort her family had gone to all her life. The old school vibe had her feeling comfortable the first time she’d stepped through the door, it was like slipping into the neighborhood dive back home just with the added seasoning of some tourists due to it being on the Vegas Strip.
Being a holiday weekend it wasn’t as hard to get a table this time of night as it normally would, and Izzy got them a spot only a few tables away from the stage. A tourist was trying to belt out Springsteen’s ‘Born to Run’ but was only managing to get every other word, she wasn’t sure if the man was drunk or had some other issue but was leaning toward drunk. Judging from the laughs of the other patrons they seemed to think the same.
“The singing’s usually pretty decent here.” Izzy told Gabe and Brianna as they sat down. “There’s a dedicated crowd that comes all the time.”
Gabe nodded as he looked around, taking in the surroundings. He smiled when he saw the back wall of the stage; ‘Dino’s - getting Vegas drunk since 1962!’ “Have to wonder if that’s a promise, threat or challenge!” he mused out loud as the man currently in charge of the microphone seemed to lose his place, blink owlishly at the screen, then squint as he started to sing the chorus.
Perching up on the stool Brianna laughed softly and also looked around. It was certainly different to anything she’d been to before, but it did remind her of one or two bars her university friends would frequent, both in smells and lighting. And music if she really thought about those days.
“I’ll get us some drinks,” Gabe said once the other two were seated.
Brianna nodded, requesting a cider and Gabe looked at Izzy.
Izzy rattled off the name of a local IPA she liked and knew Dino’s carried, and added. “Put in an order of cheese fries too. It’ll soak up the booze.” She didn’t intend to get completely shit faced, but she wasn’t going to worry about how much she had to drink that night either. Tonight was about having fun and she wasn’t driving.
“So you’ve never done karaoke before?” She asked Briana as Gabe went to get the drinks. “It’ll be hella fun, you’ll see.”
Brianna shook her head as she inhaled deeply and looked around the room. “No, this is a first,” she said, smiling brightly. “How does it work? Is there a list or something? Who knows who goes next?”
“There is a list, I went ahead and had them put our names on it when we came in,” Izzy confirmed. “There’s a machine up by the stage like a jukebox with all the songs.” She pointed up toward the stage. “It’ll have the lyrics on screen and they’ll highlight the ones that are coming up that you need to sing next as you go. If you pick a popular song a lot of times the crowd will join in and sing along with you.”
Looking at where Izzy was indicating Brianna nodded, eyes widening a little when Izzy said ‘our names’. “Do you mean all of us? You, me and Gabe?” she checked, quickly reassuring herself that she could probably just mouth the words while the other two sang.
“Well, it depends.” Izzy shrugged. “Nobody will force you to if you really don’t want to, but once you get up there and start singing you’ll forget everything else. We can go as a group or we can go on our own, they won’t care. Gabe,” she turned to the third member of their group as he sat back down. “I put our names in, and we can go as a group or on our own. What do you think?”
Gabe placed their drinks on the table and looked at Brianna. “We can go up as a group,” he told her with a reassuring smile. Since her sojourn with Radek and the other immortals he’d noticed how much more confident she was, even coming out on a night like this was something that she would never have done before. He picked up his drink and held it out to the two women. ”Ya mas!” he said, the red lights making his ouzo on ice look like translucent blood. “To our fine voices!” he added cheerfully.
Brianna returned the smile, recognising Gabe’s toast and picking up her own glass and raising it to clink against his, repeating what he said and adding, “May they not break glasses!”
Izzy joined in the toast, clinking her beer bottle against the other two. “To our fine voices!”
She took a deep pull from her beer and set it down. “Gabe have you done karaoke before? Brianna was saying you sing on your own.”
Looking around the bar the sorcerer shook his head. “No, at least not in a bar like this,” he replied, his accent a little stronger when speaking a little more loudly to be heard above the growing noise of conversations around them. “We have sing-alongs on the boats, when I was working down south, we had a sort of domestic system on some of the yachts, and sometimes in some of the bars someone would bring out a guitar,” he continued. “Once or twice there was a place that had the music system like this, but we were not usually going there when in port.”
Brianna listened and found herself tapping her foot lightly along to the beat of the background music currently playing. She allowed herself a moment to ‘see’ Gabe’s thoughts, and smiled at the vision of some of them. “And he has a really good voice!” Brianna contributed, giving him a knowing smile. She had told him when inviting him to come with her and Izzy, that she had heard him singing late at night downstairs and had been a little surprised to see the competent wizard duck his head as if embarrassed.
Gabe grinned, stopping himself from ducking his head this time, and rubbed his thumb across his lips.
“Well a good voice definitely doesn’t hurt.” Izzy grinned after another swig of her beer as she worked on getting a pleasant buzz going. “I’m looking forward to hearing it in action. We probably ought to pick a song we all know, it’ll make it easier since you’re both karaoke virgins.”
She glanced up at the stage and nodded as the next contestant started belting out the lines to ‘Sweet Home Alabama.’ “What sorts of music do you like? It’s better to go with something popular, but there’s thousands of songs you can choose from.”
Brianna looked at Gabe and shrugged. “I don’t know? I remember some of the ABBA songs, our Nanny used to play them to us in the Nursery and we’d dance around to those, singing.”
Gabe smiled, easily able to see her doing that, in duplicate. “That’s easy, we do ‘Dancing Queen’, at least!” he replied, thinking for a moment. He knew that a lot of the songs he knew from growing up were not going to be the same here in the US, and would likely not even be on the playlist. Finally he thought of one that had always been a hit on the yachts. “And how about the ever popular ‘I Will Survive’, that always gets people singing along.”
“‘Dancing Queen’ works as a start for me.” Izzy bobbed her head up and down.
Abba had not been a staple of her childhood, but even if it wasn’t her style Izzy knew the group was popular. She’d heard other groups sing it before and it seemed to always get the crowd singing along. Hell, it was infectious enough that she’d sing along if she had a few beers in her.
“How about ‘Love Shack’?” She suggested, then an idea occurred to her and her smile turned devilish. “We could do ‘I’m too sexy’. Play it for laughs? It’d certainly be an easy one to sing.” It had always been a hit back in college.
"Yes, of course, 'Love Shack' was another favourite one of Neecy," Brianna replied, then clarified for Izzy, "that's what we called our nanny."
Gabe nodded, having heard a number of stories that involved the woman, clearly someone who had played a great part in raising the twins.
“My nannies were all bikers.” Izzy shrugged. She’d grown up in a completely different world than the other woman. Either members of the club or their wives/girlfriends kept an eye on her in her preschool years when her mom or grandmother couldn’t.
“Gabe, what do you think? Love Shack or Dancing Queen to start us off?”
"Dancing Queen first, then 'Love Shack', and 'I Will Survive'?" he replied, looking from one woman to the other.
Brianna nodded in agreement, pushing down the squadron of butterflies that had launched in her stomach. She downed the rest of the drink in her glass and looked at the other two. "Another round?" she asked, "Same again?" indicating Izzy's beer as she slipped off the stool.
“That all works for me, and please.” She nodded and finished her beer, nodding in time to the beat of the song. The singer had done a decent job and everyone enjoyed singing along to Skynrd, so there were plenty of cheers and applause as he finished up.
“We’re up next, as soon as Brianna gets back with the drinks.”
It only took a few minutes before Brianna was placing the next round of drinks on the table, the applause and whistles just reaching their peak as Gabe leaned over. “We’re up!” he said to her as he slid off his stool, giving her a reassuring nod.
Brianna’s eyes widened a little and she gave a small nod, swallowed and turned to follow him up to where the microphones and screens were. The brightness of the lights there had her duck her head for a moment as her eyes adjusted, and inhale a deep breath as her eyes darted from the mikes to the screens to the two others who were up there too.
Gabe adjusted the height of the microphones as Izzy checked the song order. He checked with both that the mikes were the right height and gave Brianna a reassuring smile.
Briana’s nervousness could be spotted a mile away, and Izzy patted the other woman on the back as they went over to the stage. “Relax and just go with it, you can’t screw anything up so don’t worry. It’ll be fun, you’ll see.”
She selected the songs and waited for the first one to load, then looked at the other two. “Ready?” at their nods she hit the ‘play’ button and the music started up. “Remember, the words will highlight when it’s time to sing them. Here we go!”
The opening strains of ‘Dancing Queen’ sounded and with a little encouragement from her two companions Brianna started to sing with them.
Gabe’s eyes were glued to the screen to make sure he could keep up with the words, ABBA having been a familiar name and sound, but certainly not something he’d grown up listening to.
While it wasn’t something she was super familiar with either, Izzy had heard it enough times on the radio over her lifetime that it was easy enough to keep the pace. The crowd didn’t seem to hate the performance but there weren’t as many people singing along as had been with the Skynrd tune before it.
Still, by the end of the song the trio had seemed to find their groove and the crowd applauded as they finished the last notes to the ABBA tune. “See? That wasn’t so bad was it?” Izzy encouraged Brianna, and took a sip of her drink. “One down, two to go!”
Brianna laughed, the nerves now abating, and she nodded as the next song started. She was quietly pleased she’d managed to hold a note, and not wreck the sound created by the other two.
Gabe nodded his agreement with Izzy and again looked to the screen to prepare for the next number. He was enjoying himself, and was impressed with Izzy’s voice, admiring her confidence and willingness to give Brianna encouragement. ‘Dancing Queen’ had drawn a number of people to the dance floor, as he’d thought it would, and ‘Love Shack’ kept them there.
‘Love Shack’ was a much more fun song to sing, in Izzy’s opinion. It was faster paced and had a definite rock rhythm to it more than the europop song they’d just finished, and had an infectious energy about it. Sure enough, the crowd that wasn’t on the dance floor (and a fair number of them too) were singing along with the chorus as the song progressed, and everyone joined in on the ‘bang bang’ parts toward the end, laughing and applauding when the song finally ended a short time later.
“Doing great, keep it up!” Izzy encouraged the other two. “Strong finish!”
Brianna nodded, catching her breath after throwing everything into the final chorus. Her eyes went to the screen as the lyrics started to appear.
Gabe was enjoying himself, singing to a couple of the ladies in the audience who were up dancing, and joining in some of the dance moves that were happening in front of them.
‘I will survive’ was really a song best done solo rather than a group, but Izzy did her best to keep up with Gabe and help Brianna. Gabe was the one really shining on this last song and it showed, she was happy for him. It seemed she’d made another karaoke convert.
All too soon it was over and time to get off the stage. “What did you think?” She asked Brianna as they made their way to their seats. “Have fun? I can put our names in again to go later if you want?”
Brianna laughed as she caught her breath and sat back at their table, perching on the edge of her stool and taking a long drink from the glass in front of her. “Yes, that was amazing!” she answered as she lowered the glass, smiling broadly. “You were as good as I knew you were, probably even better,” she told Gabe before turning to Izzy. “And you were fantastic!”
Gabe grinned as he lowered the now half-empty glass back to the table. “Yeah, you could really belt it out up there,” he said to Izzy. “Can tell you’ve done this more than a few times!”
Izzy drained her glass and signaled the bartender for another beer. She laughed and beamed at her companions. “Thanks! Mom would say I’ve been singing longer than I’ve been talking, but I’ve been doing karaoke since High School, it was my friday night treat in college even when I was too busy to do anything else. Gabe, you’ve got a great voice like Brianna said you did. And Brianna you did just fine, you’ll do great now that you’ve gotten over your stage fright.”
Shaking her head Brianna finished her drink. “It’s fun, but I don’t know if I’m quite up to your standard,” she replied, “though it’s nice of you to say so!” She knew her limitations, and her strengths were in other areas, not necessarily her voice, unlike one of her mentors, Cassandra.
Izzy raised her eyebrows, a bit surprised, but she shrugged. “Hey as long as you had fun that’s all that matters. Nobody said you had to be a regular.”
“So do you come here often?” Gabe asked Izzy as another round of drinks appeared. “And is this the best place to come to?” He had enjoyed being up there, and knew he would probably be back again.
“The best place is the place you’re most comfortable.” Izzy responded without missing a beat. “I like to come here maybe every couple weeks. There’s a bar near my house that does karaoke on Thursday nights I like to go to as well, but that’s mostly locals. There are clubs that have nothing but karaoke, with private rooms for you to just have you and your friends without having to be out in a bar in public. You can even get videos off the internet and do it at home if you really want, but for me it’s more fun to have an audience singing along with you.”
Gabe nodded enthusiastically. He knew from the parties they’d had on the yachts how much of a difference it made having a crowd, and it certainly lowered people’s inhibitions when they were both plied with liquor and cheered on by a happy crowd. “You’re over in Boulder City, aren’t you?” he asked. “Being in Henderson it’s probably closer than here,” he added, glancing at Brianna. “Perhaps we can try there one Thursday night, if you’re able to find someone to work then?”
She was still looking for an assistant manager and while the field was narrowing there was still nothing outstanding to her about the candidates she had seen. “Let’s see how it goes,” she told him. “It sounds good, I just need to make sure everything is running smoothly,” she added, then looked at Izzy. “I might need to do some more practice with those ones from the internet!”
“Like I said, there’s no reason you have to be a regular,” Izzy reminded her. “And I’m not all about karaoke either.” After the Thanksgiving Dinner down at Lucky’s they both knew she was a magic user, plus the other pursuits a young professional out on her own enjoyed.
“But you’re both always welcome to come with me when I do go out for it though.”
“You’re on!” Gabe said, rather glad he’d had the opportunity to find out about these places. He hadn’t had the chance to sing much since being in the USA, and as Brianna had known, he’d been filling in by sneaking into the restaurant after hours and playing the piano in there. This was different, and he was enjoying it a lot more than he’d thought he might.
And he was also curious to learn more about what Izzy had revealed during Thanksgiving, another area he’d not had much to do with. His skills were based in the traditional ways of the generations of his family who’d passed them on to those who’d inherited the abilities through the bloodline. A very different arm of the world of mages from what Izzy, and James for that matter, had grown up in.
“And we’ll have to get together and compare notes on the ‘non-karaoke’ world of yours too,” he added with a knowing grin.
"Definitely." Izzy responded, sporting a similar grin. The plate of cheese fries arrived and she signaled for another round of drinks. "But that's for later. Right now let's have some munchies and talk about what we're gonna sing next!"