"I cannot believe I let you talk me into this!" Natalie's voice rises from behind the curtain that surroundings her dressingroom, and the scowl is clearly audible in her voice. "I'm really not sure the cape was worth it!" The squeak of leather? That's audible, too.

"The cape absolutely /makes/ it." Standing outside the dressing room, still for the tailor's last touches, Bahir glances in the direction of Natalie's curtain with an irrepressible grin. "I'm positive. Let's see."

"I haven't decided whether I'm coming out!" Natalie returns from behind the curtain. She turns, in privacy, with a desperate crane of her neck to glance over her shoulder at the hug of leather against her ass, and wrinkles her nose in consideration.

"I have got to see the cape or else I will die. Right here. Right now." Bahir's voice is solemn; his expression is not.

"What? /Really?" Natalie says, her head perking up as she glances toward the curtain.

Bahir begins to make tortured gasping for breath sounds but the tailor tells him in a quiet, dry tone that he should stand still or he will get a pin where he really doesn't want it. The gasping stops, with a last sigh. "Come onnn," he whines, instead.

"Wow, Bahir," Natalie intones, and peeks her head out, hands lifted to hold the curtain tight up against her neck so nothing else is visible. "You quite okay out here?"

Dressed in form-fitting leather subtly piped, Bahir seems quite comfortable. He flashes a grin at Natalie when she pokes her head out. "You know why you have to come out?" he asks.

Natalie sliiiiides her gaze down the length of Bahir, and she's grinning when she runs it back up to waggle her brows at him. "Why?"

Bahir waves his hand to indicate his body. "You need to see /me/. From all angles!"

Natalie breaks into abrupt laughter, but the curtain swings free at that, revealing Natalie's lean form clad in fitted leather, black piped in white, that shows off every asset she has. Or doesn't have. Over her shoulder, a cape flares dramatically. It's kind enough to also cover her ass. She steps forward and lifts her brows as she begins a slow, prowling circle around Bahir.

Bahir lacks a cape, but he makes up for it in presence -- by which we mean the leather does great things to his ass. He grins, casting a glance after Natalie's between one swish and the next. "That cape is fucking awesome," he says like a man well-pleased with the world.

"/Damn/ fucking right it is," Natalie enthuses, and for all her protests, her grin is wide enough to threaten pain if it doesn't lessen soon. Her circle is slow, and she pauses behind Bahir to grin a little more. "Not bad," she allows, and then exhales a slow whistle. "You are so going to get laid," she determines, drawing back around to look up at Bahir. Tailor, apparently, relatively invisible.

Relatively invisible, but definitely tangible, as the tailor finishes a last pin and a mark for Bahir and then moves on to Natalie. A quiet suggestion that she should hold still or get brand new piercings is rather in line with the warning that Bahir got. Speaking of, said asshole is regarding himself in the nearest reflective surface with smug vanity. "Fucking right I am. I look forward to the impression you make when everyone google-eyed over how hot you are realizes you are also smarter than them."

Natalie starts to laugh, a deep, full sound that shakes her shoulders and earns a bite of annoyance from the tailor. She coughs and mutters, "Sorry!" as she endeavors to hold still. "Fuck, Bahir. I swear I love you." She twists her head a little, glancing down at the outfit. "I feel like I need some serious eyeliner or something."

"Want to go all out?" Smile slight and growing bright, Bahir looks over at Natalie with an arch to his eyebrows. "Tailored costumes, get someone to do our makeup and hair--?"

"You are such a /girl/," Natalie teases, glancing over at him with amusement.

Bahir flexes in Natalie's direction. "/Girl/?"

"You want to get our hair and makeup done?" Natalie teases. "Seriously, did you miss the high school prom?"

Bahir sniffs. "Keep that up and I'm not going to suggest you also get your nails done."

"Wow. You're not a girl, you're /Percy/," Natalie shoots back, her lips twitching with surpressed laughter.

Bahir bites off a cackle. "Bitch." He wiggles his hands at her. His nails remain tragically horrible.

Natalie breaks into snickers so intense that she nearly doubles over, shaking, and the tailor mutters an annoyed curse as he looks over at Bahir.

Bahir folds his hands at the small of his back and looks virtuous. Her craziness is not his fault.

Natalie draws in deep, gasping gulps of breath and lifting a finger to jab it at Bahir. "That's it. Your nails are getting painted black. With little white spiderwebs."

"Oh my God you have got to be fucking kidding me." Bahir stares at Natalie in horror.

"And I'm getting someone to do your hair. They might /tease/ it."

"Oh, fuck you. No. Line." Bahir slashes his hand through the air. "I am drawing it. Black nails? /Maybe/. No spiderwebs. And no /teasing/ my hair." After a moment, he sniffs. "That damages it."

"Wuuuuuussss," Natalie sing-songs toward Bahir.

"No." Bahir is manly and firm.

"Siiiissy boy!"

"Keep this up and I'm going to arrange for strategically cut out patches on your costume."

"Do you /really/ want to go there?" Natalie shoots back, casting an eye down at-- ahem. Well. Leather is generous to certain things, really.

Bahir fidgets. "Fiend," he hisses, despite the lack of sibilants.

Natalie grins, drawing her smile broad and bright as she positively beams at Bahir. "You love me," she determines.

"I do, but I love your cape even more," Bahir confesses, glancing at it once again. He beams back at her, breaking into a laugh. "/Fuck/, I love the cape." He sighs, wistfully. "I don't think I can really pull off a cape."

"You don't get one!" Natalie smugs, and then yelps, "/Ow/!" as a stray pin finds her. An apology and a scowl later, and the tailor slips away, leaving room for Natalie to spiiiin.

Bahir reaches out to grab Natalie's cape and hold it in place, winding her in it and pulling her over. He gives her a quite careful hug, grinning from close quarters. He waggles his eyebrows. "Want to take more votes on who is hotter?" he teases.

Natalie half-stumble as she's wound in, tilting dangerously toward Bahir until he catches her in that careful hug. "I might lose this one," she admits with an elaborate sigh. "Don't let it go to your head."

"You only one the last one because we stumbled across two straight guys in a row." Rubbing his thumb over the leather, Bahir smiles as he lets go of her cape, and then shakes it straight. "This is pretty hot. We are going to be fucking fantastic."

A flicker of a frown flits over Natalie's face for a moment and her expression shadows briefly (very briefly!) before she breaks into a snicker and admits, "I look pretty hot. /You/ look pretty smoking." A pause, and then she casts a glance over at Bahir and wonders, "So tell me, do you have a brother, hot stuff?"

Bahir swishes the corner of Natalie's cape. Denied his own, he will play with hers. Swish! Swish! "I might. But he probably wouldn't look as good in full-body leather."

"I dunno-- good genes," Natalie doubts, and spins a little to take her cape in her hand and jerk. "Hey now."

Bahir makes a whiney noise. "Only fair, since I don't have one. I'll tell Adel you are looking, shall I?" He waggles his eyebrows, lasciviously.

Natalie jerks her cape away and frowns. "Don't tempt me," she warns, and smooths her cape carefully.

"You know the problem with skintight leather outfits?"

"Going to the bathroom?"

Bahir's eyes widen, thoughtfully. "That too," he agrees. "But finding someplace to stash a condom where the outline won't show. I think you should /clearly/ be prepared, in that."

Natalie's eyes widen in mirror expression and then beyond, and she nearly coughs in shock. "/Shit/, Bahir. Come on now."

"You have a /cape/." Bahir gestures, waving his hand. What this is meant to indicate is a mystery.

"Watch it!" Natalie threatens, although not without a twitch of her lips upward, "Or I'll think you're hitting on me here." Despite that warning, she gives a little twirl. Her cape swirls pleasingly. Natalie looks absolutely ecstatic.

"Percy just better be looking pretty hot on Halloween, that's all I'm saying, or else--!" Bahir looks pretty damn pleased, too.

Natalie snorts and rolls her eyes. "Uh huh," she says, and then, "When is Percy /not/ hot, let's be honest."

Bahir opens his mouth, closes it, then opens it again, closes it. He thinks. Finally, he says, "When he's sick. He is the whiniest person on Earth and the dribbling snot puts me off."

"Gosh. That must be so hard for you," Natalie draws dryly.

"It /is/." Bright and obnoxious, Bahir adds, "Luckily, he has a fairly strong constitution and isn't often sick."

"I hate you," Natalie declares, and flounces toward the curtain. "And I'm putting my clothes back on."

"Damn," says Bahir, all disappointed. He sighs dramatically as Natalie goes to peel out of leather. "Thought of another problem with skin-tight leather outfits."

"Uh huh," Natalie answers from behind the curtain, wincing a little as she works on stripping the leather free from her skin.

As she fights the dead cow skin, Bahir leans against the wall and looks over the room with a small curve to his lips. "I'm glad you agreed to my whim, and to coming with me. This should be fun."

"Yeah, well, I might still regret this!" Natalie answers, but the tone of her voice suggests a grin. After a moment she admits, "I'm kind of excited about it. A little."

"The wonderful thing is that no matter how ridiculous your costume is, someone else will always be even more over the top. We will look positively demure, I promise you," Bahir says. "The people-watching aspect is one of my favorite parts."

"Yeah?" Natalie answers, her voice lifted with entrance from behind the curtain. After a moment she appears, one hand stretched behind her to flip her ponytail free of her shirt. The costume is neatly hung on a hanger inside. "And I hear there's free booze, right?"

Bahir's turn! He goes to change, although reluctantly. Obviously, his ego is in love with this costume. "Good booze, too," he calls back. "Ridiculous little themed finger-food. Bonfire outside, too."

"Are you kidding me? They do a /bonfire/?" Natalie answers in disbelief. "Wow, do they not seem the kind."

Bahir laughs. "It is a very /civilized/ bonfire," he says, curtain flapping back in his fight with the costume. "It's always over the top. The Hellfire Club has two big parties. Halloween is--." He fades, briefly, and then gives a sharp flap to free himself from a sleeve. "Halloween is one," he picks up again, tone somewhat less bright. "New Year's is another."

"I have such a hard time picturing you there," Natalie confesses, raising her voice to be heard over the flap and crack of leather. "I mean. Percy, sure, but you--"

"Adel?" asks Bahir, curious.

"Mmm. Yeah, Adel," Natalie allows.

"Yeah. Adel likes it there. He spends time there, you know -- 'networking'." Bahir reaches out to airquote, arms bare to the shoulder. "Calls it work. Not a lot of scientists there, really. Some. Not many."

Natalie peers toward those arms thoughtfully. "And how exactly did you end up there, again?"

The arms retract in order to facilitate removal of the rest of his costume. Bahir's tone is cheeky: "Networking. No. Did you ever wonder why I have such a sweet deal at the SRC?"

"/Really/?" Natalie sounds shocked! SHOCKED! Or possibly just abruptly fascinated.

"I knew Shaw," Bahir says. "I mean, we weren't golfing buddies, but I respected his intelligence, even if I disagreed with his politics, and he respected mine. We had some spirited disagreements. He wasn't entirely the blustering bigot that you saw on television."

"Holy fuck!" Natalie startles. "You're not serious. /Sebastian Shaw/? Are you-- holy /shit/, Bahir!"

Bahir snorts. "Behold: hidden depths." There's a hop and a thunk, then an, "Ow," from within. The last creak of leather is swiftly followed by the rustle of fabric. "No, really. That's more or less how I got in. I think that, if Shaw were still alive, he'd have hired me for his company's bioresearch division. He was interested in cultivating my talents for his own reasons, of course, but still." SUBTEXT.

"Holy crap," Natalie says again, and then after a thoughtful pause, offers her own claim to fame: "Did I tell you I met Tony Stark in the park the other day?" CREEPY ALT CROSSING. "Don't hurt yourself," she advises in quick afterthought.

"He's kind of hot." DOES THIS MAKE ME A TWINK? Bahir sniggers at her advice, hurrying through the last few steps and coming out as he tugs his shirt down. "Did he hit on you?"

"Are you kidding me? /Kind of/?" YES. Natalie snorts and then shakes her head. "/Tony Stark/, Bahir. Come on." There's a pause, and then she adds slowly, "They uh-- kind of nibbled at me, a couple of weeks ago."

"Stark did?" Bahir gives Natalie an arched, expectant look. "And you didn't /tell/ me? Seriously? He hit on you?"

"What? /No/!" Natalie frowns and jabs a finger at Bahir. "Tony Stark did /not/ hit on me. And Stark Industries did. Nibbled. Whatever." She looks abruptly defensive and claims, "It slipped my mind!" LIE.

"Oh. I thought you meant Stark nibbled--." Bahir waves his hand, and pushes the curtain to the side to make conversation easier as he goes back to hang his costume up. "Nibbles. Nibbles are good."

"/No/!" Natalie says, with /emphasis/. "Holy fuck, Bahir al Razi. Mind out of the gutter, please!" Her gaze trails after him as she frowns seriously.

"I mean from /companies/." Bahir looks wounded, glancing over his shoulder at Natalie. "A nibble shows there is interest in your work. If one group is interested, others probably are, too."

"Duh," Natalie says concisely, and trails after him.

It is cramped. Bahir hangs their costumes side by side, and flaps her cape a little. "What do they want you for?"

"They were-- vague," Natalie answers with a faint frown. "But it was the matching stuff. The algorithims, the picking out of tiny details. Adaptations."

"Yeah. Well, it's pretty useful stuff you do." Bahir slides his arm around Natalie's waist, and looks at their costumes. His smile slowly grows again. "At least Stark Industries has a presence here, so you wouldn't have to move chasing a job, right?"

Natalie leans into Bahir, tipping her head toward his shoulder as she considers leather. "I'm sure they want it for targetting shit," she tells him bluntly. "I can't imagine what else. I'm not going to go build weapons."

"Tell them that," encourages Bahir. "They obviously want you, so see how bad they want you. Tell them you don't want to be put on any weapons projects. What about the Sentinel armor? Would you want to work on that? It's not /exactly/ a weapon, but."

Natalie lifts her head a bit to turn her gaze up at Bahir, baffled. "What on earth would I be good for with the Sentinel stuff?"

"I'm not saying you should work on that, exactly, but what about, like, defense technology? Instead of offensive?" Bahir wrinkles his nose. "I don't know what they do. I know how you feel, though."

Natalie shifts uncomfortably against Bahir's side and twines her arm around his waist, as if for further support. "I don't know," she says eventually. "Maybe. I guess-- I know it's something we /need/. I do. But at the same time-- that line is so thin."

"Yeah." Bahir squeezes, pulling Natalie against him. "I held out to keep absolute control over the work I did for my thesis. I didn't want to do my work for, say, Shaw, and then have it taken out of my hands and turned into a weapon against me. Only do what you are comfortable and proud to be doing."

Natalie's lips quirk slightly with recollection and she stands quiet against Bahir's side for a moment before she turns and tiptoes up to brush a kiss against his cheek. "Yeah," she says, rocking back and tugging away to collect her coat and bag. "We'll see what else comes down the pipe. I can hold out for awhile, anyway-- assuming I survive next week."

"Assuming you survive," Bahir says agreeably, rather than reassure her that she will.

Natalie snorts and rolls her eyes good-naturedly, then leads the way out of the shop.

OOC: Backdated! COSTUME FITTING.