Nine or ten is fairly early for a place that is basically open all the time, ever. The lobby of the casino is sinfully bright, fading sharply off into dimmer lighting around the lounge and the restaurant and the bar. The light and noise from the slot machines overhead filter down the balconies and stairwells. In North America, casinos are heady alcoholic tourist traps; no wonder Kristopher and a bunch of newly-made high school graduates had come here to live it up, the place was absurd.

The clientèle was pretty absurd as well, a random mix depending on the occasion; jeans-and-teeshirted yucks, giggling teenage girls that reminded Kristopher nearly painfullyof the ones she'd come here with, people in suits and gowns for parties, troupes of elderly and a bachelorette party.

"What's on the agenda?" For her part, since she wasn't a gambler, rum and coke sounded like an excellent way to start somebody else's birthday.

“Drinks,” Tam says decisively. He’s unsure what’ll happen after, but drinks – or rather, more drinks – are always a good way to start the evening. It might involve gambling at some point or other but he’s going to try and get away without it for as long as possible. Some people might say this is not really entering into the spirit of things. Tam would reply that these people obviously didn’t fully appreciate that most of these drinks were free and that they could, potentially, get in and out of the casino without spending one Canadian cent.

Except even after all little as three beers he’d probably say it in much coarser language.

"Right," she says, with just a note of her mother's single-minded placidity. "Later we can watch the bachelorettes do karaoke or something."

The thick and thickly patterned carpeting muffles the noise of her shoes almost completely, although there's marble tile around the bar. She slides onto a stool and puts her elbows up on the counter, long coltish legs crossed. There are photos of Moira scattered throughout the house, but even at Kristopher's age her mother had been rubenesque (although if you knew Moira, you knew age was a moot point). There are no photos of a father set out to explain for this lanky Flapper gene which has so successfully elbowed its way in.

The rum and coke is requested and duly received. "Give him a little umbrella or something," she tells the bartender, doing one of those girl things that involves simultaneously hunching over and pushing one's tits out, "it's his birthday."

Tam protests, but not too strongly or too well, and when his drink arrives it’s duly umbrella’d up. It’s also got a bendy straw in it. And a flamingo. He regards it for a while, certain that someone somewhere is taking the piss, but it tastes alcoholic enough.

“Do they have,” pause, “burlesque here?” It takes him a while to think of the word you’re meant to use. He’s quite sure ‘semi-naked dancers’ isn’t it. The barman looks at him oddly, and he’s not sure whether it’s a look that says no, don’t be so coarse, or of course, what kind of establishment doesn’t?

Evidently the bartender's quick thinking in terms of drink decoration is satisfactory, because Kristopher leans back slightly and smiles.

"Showgirls? I don't know, we can look. Failing that I'll bet we could get a show out of those highschool kids if we let them have some of our drinks."

Maybe it's just being out of her mother's house that makes her chatty, although being not only not hungover but in fact slightly tipsy probably helps a lot.

Tam laughs uproariously at the idea. “Oh aye? And you know this from your time here after high school, do you?” Once he’s settled down a bit he stirs the flamingo round in his drink. All these drink decorations are a bit… well, a bit gay, he decides. Good fun though.

Of course the high school girls probably won’t be giving them a second glance because they’ll be assuming Tam and Kristopher are together, and therefore they won’t be able to get free drinks out of either of them. Except for a group of them seems to be looking over and giggling and making Tam feel incredibly self-conscious in the process.

Kristopher smiles beatifically. "I don't know. We might have, if they'd asked. I think the boys were pretty cowed, actually. We outnumbered them." She uses the straw to push ice cubes around, crunches a piece.

"You could ask them if they do burlesque here." And they'd laugh at him. A lot.

“Hey… ‘xcuse me, hi.” It would be a lot easier to get the barman’s attention if Tam had Kit’s endowment. Then again, they’d probably look pretty odd on him. “Ma friend an’ I were just wonderin’ what sort of shows you have on here.” Wink wink nudge nudge. He drained the last of his drink through the bendy straw and gave a lazy smile.

The bartender explains, with what he surely believes is unending patience, that there is in fact a magic show in two and a half hours. He doesn't mention that there's a big old sign somewhere in the lobby explaining the aforementioned, or that it's not even his job to know, and Kristopher smiles winningly at him for his trouble.

"Well, that's nearly as good as dancers," Kristopher observes thoughtfully, sucking away the last of the rum and coke from beneath the ice cubes.

“Yeah,” Tam replies, stirring his swizzle stick round the bottom of his glass. “So wha’ll we be doing for the next two an’ a ha’f hours?”

There should be more people at this party, honestly. There should be Jessie and Johnny and all the kids from back home. Kristopher is… well, she’s letting Tam stay at her house, which is lovely, and she hasn’t been openly disdainful of him so far, but he gets the impression she’s only tolerating him for as long as he amuses her. He also thinks she’s going to try and spring an intellectual conversation on him some time, leaving him completely and utterly lost for words.

Probably, yeah. Probably the morning after they've finally gotten around to sleeping together. Oops?

Kristopher shrugs. "Drink, explore the place," which clearly means 'find rooms to get into and explore where they don't like people going,' "'hit the slots.'" The last is said as though she has only heard of such a thing, and maybe it only exists hypothetically to her.

“The one-armed bandits, eh?” Tam asks disdainfully, although his disdain must surely pale in comparison to what Kristopher could muster should she really try. “Nah. Ah think we’ll go explore the place.”

He slides off his barstool and looks around uncertainly. It’s not as big and flashy as some of the casinos he’s seen on television but it’s still absurd enough to be disorientating. “Where to,” he searches around in unfamiliar territory for a pet name, and eventually comes up with “Kittio?”

"There's a floor above the second that you can see from outside," she suggests, setting down the corpse of her drink. "Or I'm sure there's a basement."

Kristopher is treated to a brief but vivid flashback, walking down endless flights of stairs, the yellow of sodium lights glinting dully on sand on the way to the parking structure. It lasts only a moment, but it leaves her slightly dizzy. "Oof," she says thoughtfully. "Um- let's try to get into the third floor, actually."

Tam isn’t used to Kristopher being indecisive. It would throw him off balance but he’s already been thrown off balance by the casino, so Kristopher being indecisive actually pushes him in the other direction and he ends up directly centred in the middle. It’s so easy (and amusing) to ask her what they should do; like throwing a rubber ball down a corridor. Except it’s a rubber ball that will occasionally decide to bounce back and hit you right in the face.

“I think we need to take the stairs t’second first. Erm,” he says. That would be the natural plan for going up to the floor above the second, which Kristopher has suggested twice, yes. “C’mon, let’s see if we can see one of those girls who hand out free cigarettes along the way.” He’s going to be severely disappointed when he finds out the Fortuna Casino doesn’t have them.

"Right, right." Kristopher pushes a hand through her hair, then uses it to take Tam's and starts for the stairs. That little- whatever it was, it took her by surprise, made her pensive and distracted; it would be nice if she got a little warning beforehand, but she gets another small one on the stairs (standing in the parking-structure, sand and the hollow sound of wind in all directions) and nearly trips.

"Christ," she complains, but makes it up the staircase intact.

“Fuck!” Tam catches hold by the elbow and tries to stop her falling, but by the time he’s done so Kristopher’s already continued up the stairs quite adequately. “You haven’t drinken that much, have you?” he asks, wandering a critical eye over her. No, of course not, he knows she hasn’t. And even if she had, Tam can’t really see her being the sort to stumble about. She’s more the sort to remain vertical until she melts onto the floor in a very neat heap.

"No," she says shortly, hand on the balcony railing at the top to reorient. "It's- I think it's a thing from a thing that happened," she explains after a moment of breathing. "Like post-traumatic stress whatsit. It guess it might happen again, just make sure I don't fall down any fucking stairs and don't worry about it."

Then she straightens and smiles, all sharp little white teeth. "Okay- let's find some unlocked doors."

Tam’s never heard of an eightee – no, wait, nineteen? She’s told him this before – of a whatever-year-old suffering from post-traumatic stress whatsit. Her last statement (not the one about locked doors, the one before that, so technically her middle statement) has him hovering about anxiously in big brother mode. It’s the sort of thing said by people in films just before they fall down a huge flight of stairs. It’s also the sort of thing that makes Tam think perhaps he shouldn’t have ignored all those huge screaming signs pointing to a girl more messed-up than any girl he’s ever known before.

"O-kay," he agrees. "You want ta lead the way again?"

So long as she isn't thoughtfully asking him questions like, 'Do you hear that creaking noise?' or 'Would you mind helping me dig a hole in the basement floor?' then he is probably doing okay, although that could probably change.

"Oh- I don't know. I guess. I don't know any more about what's locked and what's unlocked here than you do." The dizzy spells are apparently over and forgotten for now.

"Well then, let’s try and find the... he said they had shows, di’n’t he? We can go an’ find them. And find the alcohol. They give out free alcohol on the shows." That should’ve been in the shows, but he’s so sure of himself now, in a Just William type way, that he sticks out an arm for Kristopher to take.

This birthday is turning out quite awkward. Tam is spending most of the time with the feeling lurking in the back of his mind that something is wrong. He can’t get shitfaced and suggest pushing trolleys into the canal because if he did, Kittio would be there, and she’d know what he was thinking before he did. And he’d want to start standing up straighter, opening doors for ladies, reading philosophy and growing his hair out.

Oh dear. He wants to start becoming a better person for her.

"Well, there's that-"

The second floor was busy, all kinds of rooms here for probably cards or roulette or she didn't really know what, but all of the moving people and staff were absolutely ignoring an open auditorium built like a small amphitheater, roped off with brass stands and much-used red velvet ropes.

Kristopher, taking his arm and either oblivious of the inner workings of Tam's mind or taking same for granted, was not, despite outward appearances, somebody who wouldn't get shitfaced and go push trolleys into the canal. But he wasn't suggesting it, so she said, "There's probably stuff to get into in there. Nobody's watching it."

Actually there were probably security cameras everywhere, but various recent events made Kristopher not really care about those.

Now, it would’ve been a lot easier if he’d been wearing a tuxedo, but this is what Tam did: he took Kristopher rather too literally at her word. Walking deliberately, he went past the people gambling their money away and having a grand old time of it. He said: "come on then," and he unhooked one of the velvet ropes. Walk tall (which is not easy when you’re not) and nobody will question where you’re meant to be. Well, usually. This is a casino, after all, and they might start questioning it if he goes behind the blackjack table, or into the vaults, or any of the numerous other places civilians aren’t allowed to go.

Such as the stage, perhaps. Which he is currently mooching around looking for stairs up. And he turns to Kristopher and says in a sing-song, playful voice, rarely heard because he’s usually trying to be a hardman (but not with Kittio, never with her): "ah dare yer."

Kristopher bites down on a grin at being invited inside so cordially. Then she kind of stands around in the middle of the theater, watching him mull, and then walks down towards the stage.

"The stairs are probably along the side or through different doors-" and then, because she's not a girl to turn down a dare, she puts one foot up on a floodlight (they look sturdy enough, and she doesn't weigh very much), and puts her hands up on the edge of the stage and levers herself up. She doesn't look very athletic, or much like somebody who trespasses on private property very often, but she moves like a veteran fence-climber.

"Come up! I bet there's all kinds of stuff backstage. Plan A, we get into the dressing-rooms, Plan B, sex in the service elevator," she adds cheerfully, standing there on the stage with her hands on her hips looking at the curtain on the near wall. It's hard to tell whether she's joking or not. Plan C is probably a security guard coming in and asking them to leave.

It’s funny the things siblings can have in common. Most people wouldn’t be able to spot Tam as Jessie’s brother in a crowded room. They’ve got the same coloured hair and that’s about it. Different noses, different shades of green in their eyes, different metabolisms – but when Kristopher mentions sex in the elevator, Thomas Joyce goes a shade that will be very familiar to anyone who’s been watching Jessica. He can feel his ears going pink as if he was fourteen again and a girl had just made a lewd joke. He wants to be like James Bond and raise an eyebrow to make a witty quip in return but knows the best he’ll be able to manage is a stammered pun so long as he’s around her.

He puts his head down and pushes himself up from the edge of the stage, showing a hidden amount of strength in those lanky arms of his. He’d admired Kittio’s technique (and her other aspects) as she’d climbed. She looked like the sort of girl you’d want to have with you as you broke into some posh bastard’s house.

"Suppose it’s called Plan A because it’s the one we try first, then," he says cheerfully after taking a few deep breaths facing away to try and cool down his face. He wanders over and pushes one of the curtains slightly aside. They’re surprisingly heavy to someone who hasn’t been on a stage since weeing himself as Gabriel in the school nativity play.

"Well, we haven't found the elevator yet," she points out, totally reasonably.

The theater is lavishly decorated, all gilded plaster sphinx's heads and totally non-period Corinthian pillars, red gold and blue. The actual stage is basically empty, and Kristopher walks straight towards the left wing and ducks behind the backdrop.

Back-stage is, appropriately, kind of like looking at the back of the prop-up facades of buildings in cheap westerns, strictly utilitarian. All plywood and paint-stained ladders and, overhead, the edge of the lights-heavy catwalk that hangs over the stage. There are hallways off to either side.

"Not bad."

Tam has a top hat. He did not come into the casino wearing it. He was not wearing it when they climbed onto the stage. But he is wearing it now because having found it placed precariously on one of the utilitarian beams, he couldn’t resist the urge to put it on. It’s only being kept up by his ears. He’s sure, though, that it makes him look more theatrical and less likely to get questioned. He doesn’t even mind the sparseness of backstage (which would under other circumstances be a severe disappointment) now that he has a top hat.

He wanders, because wandering is something Tam does a lot of, slightly down the left hand hallway. "Dunno, ah was expecting tigers. An’ showgirls." That's twice in this thread Tam has been of you opinion you can never go wrong with showgirls.

"Well, the show doesn't start for a while, they're probably off getting drunk or dressed or ready. Nice hat."

Kristopher wanders along after him, listening hard for signs of life. It's all quiet so far. The hallway looks very long, and suddenly she says, "You know, one time I opened a door at the house-" Moira's house- "and it opened up into a back room at the theatre on Bay Street. Does this hallway look weird to you?"

It's probably a waste of time to ask, but she does anyway, and sniffs the air when she thinks Tam isn't looking. It just smells like dust and plaster and greasepaint.

Drunk and dressed are both satisfactory explanations so Tam tips his hat to them, and then again to the compliment of his (well, it’s his now) hat.

"Seriously?" It’s asked in the tone of ‘whoa that is awesome’ rather than ‘I don’t believe you’. Tam has explored precisely three of the many, many doors Kristopher’s house possesses: the one leading to his room, the one leading to the bathroom and the one leading to the kitchen. They have always led to these places and as far as Tam is aware always will. As soon as he moved in, Kristopher gave dire warnings about opening any of the other doors, and Tam listened to them religiously. "Like a secret passage, then?"

He looks at her long and hard. "Erm..." he finally ventures, "no? But ah’ve no’ been backstage before. Where d’ye think this one is going, then?" He pulls out the half a cigarette he stored away earlier and lights it with his finger. He’s been itching to finish it for a while and there’s nobody here to tell him off.

Kristopher shakes her head absently. "No, like you look at the door and the door is in my house and then you open the door and you're in a room in a building a couple miles away- I don't know."

Just as she starts worrying that the hallway really does look weird, it ends in a few doorways. At the very end of the hall is, ha ha, the service elevator, one of those big old things with the metal grate you have to pull open. Kristopher, cracking up at it, pulls on one of the doors, which is locked.

Oh, one of those doors. Of course. Like Narnia.

What the hell?

Tam takes over and pulls at the service elevator with slightly more vigour than Kristopher. Once in there he’d probably make awkward small talk but it’s the look of the thing. He has to look like he’s giving it a good go because if he didn’t he wouldn’t be Tam. Tam does not, for example, worship girls from afar, he gets in their knickers as soon as possible and a rollicking good time is had by all.

"Looks like it’s locked," he says. "These doors. These magic doors. They’re the ones y’told me not t’go into, right?"

The doors thing is taking a while to sink in.

Similarly and still laughing, Kristopher tries the other doors- for the look of the thing, because girls are supposed to like alternatives or something stupid like that. They're locked, so she follows him into the elevator. The grate isn't difficult to close behind her, they keep it oiled or something. She's disappointed to see no button for the third floor so she hits down; the elevator judders into motion, and then she hits STOP when it's safely between floors and leans on the opposite wall.

"So," she says, looking at him thoughtfully, and, "yeah?" Evidently she wasn't joking, and has furthermore been counting the last two hours as small-talk. It's probably worth mentioning that Kristopher blossomed late, but with a vengeance.

Oh Christ on a bike he hadn’t actually meant to open the thing, honest. It just happened. Then he’d gone in – to see where it went – and Kristopher had wandered in after him. He couldn’t very well chicken out at that point so he’d stayed in to see where they were going and then she’d pushed the stop button and now he’s having to concentrate on not letting his heart speed up so fast it kills him and really, you really shouldn’t have to concentrate on natural body things like that and oh gods he can see the way that dress fits her now and all the beer is catching up and making him light headed.

"Christ," he hisses forcefully and draws a sharp breath. "You’re so beautiful." It’s not going to win any awards for originality but the earnest way he’s gazing at her has to win Tam points for something.

Plan B it is.

"Come here," Kristopher says, kind of like she'd said 'Come up' standing there on the stage, a dare in response to a dare, and it's kind of quick and kind of dirty and Kristopher fucks like she's drowning, back up against the wall of the elevator and one leg hooked around and her dress somewhere up around her ears, and for god's sake she'd had rubbers in her purse. And when it's over she just pulls her panties back up and her dress back down and pushes a hand through her hair, in this cheerful little mood that's strangely inappropriate to just having done it in an elevator with a boy who's just this side of a stranger.

Kristopher isn’t the only one who can entangle herself because Tam’s got his hands around her waist and then one hand in her hair and he can feel her ribcage pressing back on his hand and her hair getting knotted up around his fingers. She feels so small that at first he’s going to break a rib until she hooks that leg up behind him and then he’s lost with his eyes screwed tight and he’s taller than her although not by much so he puts one hand down to support her.

He lost the cigarette before they started. The blazer, too, is now on a heap in the corner. He’s flushed from doing it in clothes that were obviously not designed for that purpose. The most bizarre part of it all is Kristopher, merrily pulling her knickers back up as if she does this every day. Tam doesn’t. He can’t act for toffee either, as the Gabriel incident showed. After cleaning himself up with an old tissue he finds in the blazer pocket he comes up behind Kristopher, wraps his arms round her waist and nuzzles into her bob, too hopped up on endorphins to care what she thinks any more.

Kristopher seems to view this as an acceptable thing to do, because she leans back into it and gives a humming little half-sigh, like she'd needed that. Which, considering it was her idea, she probably had.

So she just stands there breathing a while, hands on the arms around her, and then glances thoughtfully at the buttons, already wondering whether to go down or back up.

"Happy birthday to meee," Tam half sings in a dopey swagger, nuzzling Kittio even closer. He kisses her lightly on the cheek. Fucking first and kissing later isn’t the usual way of doing things but Tam has learnt very quickly that Kristopher isn’t a usual girl.

"Up or down, m’lady?" He risks taking his left hand up so he’s cupping her boob every so gently. What Tam wants most in the world right now is to sleep. Next to that, cuddles, a cigarette and something to drink will do.

Kristopher chuckles, sounding contented. "Let's go up, we'll get out how we got in." She doesn't feel like figuring out how to get out of wherever this would end up if they went down.

"D'you still want to see the magic show? It-" She pulls her cell phone out of her purse and laughs aloud, dropping back in. "It should start in like an hour. I hope the theater hasn't started filling up."

"Summin’ funny?" Tam yawns lazily at Kristopher’s phone. He jerks into a state of nearer awakeness when he starts considering how they got in and exactly how they’re going to get out again.

"Aye, well," he eventually decides on, "if it has, we can magic them away. You can anyway. You’re my magic chickadee." And he squeezes her extra tight.

"Oh, is that what that is," Kristopher says inanely, "I'd been wondering-" and turns around in his arms to actually kiss him- that backwards relationship progression again.
Then she makes the elevator go back up.

That being what what is has Tam a little confused, so fortunately he doesn’t have much time to worry about it before he’s being kissed by a mouth that seems to be all sharp little teeth. There’s a girl attached to this mouth, of course, and at the moment Tam thinks she’s the most wonderful girl in all the world.

When the elevator arrives at its destination Tam’s still got his arms wrapped round her and his blazer’s still in a crumpled heap on the floor.