Social butterflies tend to congregate to crowded, noisy places in attempt to surround themselves by people. Vaughan is a social butterfly. The amusement park is a crowded, noisy place.

Vaughan finds that in the amusement park one is either noticed by all or equally disregarded by all. A person is disregarded when they are too bland or unimportant to be noticed, to be picked out singularly as unique and worth studying. A person is disreguarded when they do not make enough of a statement and they just become another face in the crowd, another part in a functioning system. Another part of the system. Vaughan does not like being overlooked.

The other option is to show up with enough umph that it is impossible not to stare, to do a double take, to gape, to talk about get people to talk about you a week from now. Vaughan achieves this with very little effort.

Vaughan could dress with an exocentric style that would leave a woman’s mouth agape and even draw a few gazes from men who aren’t even inclined to that direction but he does not. Being a stripper lends him a very fun wardrobe in which sometimes he does see fit to apply, yet, a kid at heart, Vaughan loves his holy jeans and faded tee shirts far too much to replace too often. He is wearing said pair of holy jeans, possibly with more holes down the legs then material, and a faded army green tee with two very faded cream color skulls with their mouths open wide as if shouting at one another. Vaughan’s hair draws attention all on it’s own. The color is auburn in it’s richest form and the texture is thick with so many full curls that it leaves his hair giving the sense of a lion’s mane. It falls around his face in soft, tight curls and compliment’s his very dark skin.

What draws attention more then anything that any eccentric clothing would do, more then what his hair already does lies strictly in the fact that Vaughan has more confidence in himself and his humanly abilities then possibly anyone in this park at all. He walks with his shoulders straight and his head high. The amount of positive energy floting off of this young man is enough to reach out and touch. He seems like a happy enough young man with a fresh, crisp smile so inviting but never telling what exactly he is inviting. He’s carrying a cardboard cone with a fluff of pink cotton candy on the end of it. He never eats unhealthy until he comes to the amusement park. He’ll have to double his workout for a week just to get this junk splurge off.

Vaughan loves the roller coasters so it is that we find him standing at the fence of one, watching the snake of a coaster be pulled up the first hill with the loud, ominous clack clack clack clack, his head tipped back to follow it’s progress.

Diane wonders why people like to watch rollercoasters. There are always a certain number of people leaning on the fence, staring at the cars as they whizz down the hill. Some of them are parents, she supposes, of people on the rides. She isn't. It would be hard to look less parental then Diane.

She's been walking for quite a while today and her feet are starting to hurt. It's not suprising - there are three inch heels on her strappy boots. Not stilettos, but still higher then is sane or reasonable. Her black jeans, fitted tightly to her not so skinny legs, are tucked into the tops of the boots. Her black tee-shirt is so little fabric stretched over so much girl, that it's a wonder something hasn't snapped.

She's also wearing an armload of black jelly bangles, and matching earrings that are at least as big as the braclets. Her face is powered to palest white, her lips bright red. Pale, stone green eyes are lined with heavy smudges of kohl, running into smears of charcol and then burgandy eyeshadow.

She is not watching the rollercoaster. She's watching people watching the rollercoaster - which to her mind is twice as fun. A young man has caught her eyes, not least because his hair is shiny. Her own hair is a mess of red, white, black and bronze streaks, blow-dried and ironed and brushed into a state of cowering compliance.

Thoughtfully, she takes a bite of her candy-apple. It's as red as her lips, and it makes her remember suddenly just how hungry she was.

Vaughan is so accustomed to being watched, caused both by the fact that he often wants the attention and the fact that he spends eight hours nearly every night dancing on a stage in front of no less then one hundred people. It is also because of the fact that he often wants the attention that causes him to perk up his head and look around to see if he is getting it.

Vaughan leans over the railing casually putting his elbows on the metal to rest and scans the crowd around him. He meets the eyes of anyone that he notices staring at him and many of them look away, fearful to be caught, ashamed at having been caught. The blond woman, slender and lovely, here with her husband and her son flushed pink and turned, taking her sons hand and walking away. The small little girl smiles shyly and presses her face against her father's side. The teenage, gender confused boy stares, startled to have been caught looking, confused that he had been looking at all, glares at Vaughan as if he had forced him to check out the way the pants tightened over his hips.

His eyes eventually come up to meet hers and as he has everyone else in the crowd, he smiles at her and it looks surprisingly wolfish and feral yet somehow it remained inviting and open. Come talk to me, it said cheerfully. I am your darkest dream, it whispered at the same time. If anyone has the art of being friendly and happy down to a tee it is Vaughan. If anyone has the art of seduction perfected, it too is Vaughan.

Diane catches the look, and the smile. She shivers. There's something dark and scary in there and she's not sure she likes it. Still waters run deep, and also have large carniverous reptiles lurking in them. She smiles back, a wide, bright smile that doesn't give away any inner fear. Her eyes do that for her.

She's not going to close the space between him and say hello though. She can ignore the siren-call smile he's giving her. She looks away, to where the cars of the rollercoaster are screeching down the steepest drop. People are screaming and waving their hands in the air. Her eyes chase it down the slope, and up the next hill.

The apple is sticky, warm and sweet, and red sugar is getting stuck in her teeth. The light catches in the candy and it glows, like some wild gemstone.

She blows a kiss to someone on the 'coaster, just as it gets to the top, but she doesn't actually know them.

The screams are what alerts him that the coaster is about to go over the edge and he snaps his head around in time to watch it plummet downward and then curl back up to climb another hill quickly only to be dropped again into a twist that sends you upside down for as long as it takes to loose your breath.

The smile here is less feral, more childlike. He laughs and it throws his curls around his face and gives the impression that he may not be as old as twenty but rather might not even be as old as fifteen. When he turns again to look at her she's blowing a kiss to some soul who is currently swishing along a straight stretch that in fie point two seconds will be slammed around a smooth curve and dropped again.

He's still smiling, still looks to young to have been able to possess that dark, deep look he had flashed before. He tears a piece off and stuffs the clump of pink puffy sugar into his mouth, straightens, and walks towards her. He still looks young.

"Fun?" As in are you having any?

Diane looks at him, slowly, and takes another bite of her apple. She smells of cheap vanilla perfume and Radiant shampoo. "Yeah, sure," she says, in the way that means 'not really, no'. "You do know," she adds, twisting a blonde streak of hair that frames the left side of her face, "that you have more holes then you've got jeans."

She assumes he does know, but she figures she'll point it out anyway. She's not entirely sure about the jeans. They're holey. Very holey. She assumes it's a fashion statement. She's going to have to think about it. "How 'bout you? You havin' fun?"

Vaughan opens his arms when he looks down at his pants, as if his arms would get in the way of his view, as if he didn't already know that his pants had holes. He smiled back up to her. "You ought to see the backside." He grinned now. These were his favorite jeans, always had been. He had worn them into holes. The backside was as bad as the front but more specifically, there was a hole running horizontal from seam to seam right under his right butt cheek. It covered everything but it was enough to reveal that he either wore a thong or nothing at all beneath. "I have to agree though, they are getting a bit sad."

He shook his head. "I will be when I find someone to ride the coaster with me." Inviting smile, not the seductive one from before but the pleading one of a six year old. "It's no fun to ride with an empty seat beside you."

She chews her apply thoughtfully. It's rapidly disappearing, which is too bad. It's just so good. She scans the crowd. Balding middle-aged father, nah. Dumpy woman who wouldn't know fun if it jumped up and smacked her - definately not. Her gaze settles on a leggy blonde in a Hello Kitty halter top and cut-off jeans.

"How 'bout her," Diane suggests, tilting her head to one side slightly and smirking just a little. "She looks like she could do with someone to take her for a ride."

Her gaze slides on to a tall, skinny young man with hair down past his ass. "Or him. He looks companionable, if not the most exciting in the world. Artistic and probably with a strange sense of humour."

"You can only have so many people with a strange sense of humor in one crowd," he replied smiling, "and I've already filled that position." His eyes roamed down the legs of legs and he smirked. "I could take her for a ride." His voice had turned husky and dark, carrying a tone that matched perfectly the smile he had provided her earlier.

Let me be your wet dream.

He can't just turn it on and off. Most of the time he doesn't even realize he's doing it in the first place. It's a hazard of the job: when you spend every night trying to be sexy you end up well...being sexy.

His eyes came back to her. "I could take her for a ride but she doesn't look like the sort to smile when it's over. Or the kind to want to wait in the half an hour long line." He bobbed his head towards the line for the roller coaster. Funny, one might not be able to tell if he'd meant those comments to be dirty at all considering the way he carried on the conversation as though he hadn't intended them to be.

Diane shrugs, crunching on the last bite of her apple and then wondering what to do with the paper stick. "Well, sor-ry," she says. She'd ask him to make a better suggestion, but she knew what he'd say. Crap. She needs a decent comeback. There's something weird about this guy. Second weirdo she's met this week. She ended up smuggling the last one out of a diner...

God, it's been a week.

"Well, I'm only takin' calls for cash," she says. She's quoting a chart-topping rock song from the seventies, and it's inspired by her friend Jessie, who'd somehow thought she was a whore. Despite her make-up, and the frequent pleather skirt, she's not. She really needs to lose that skirt. It was a... a long story, anyway. And passed it's sell-by date.

Vaughan really isn't that weird, per say. He's just eccentric. And not really in a bad way, just a very very open way that has little to do with immodesty and very much to do with a lack of shyness.

He smiled at her sor-ry and even chuckled softly. He held out his hand for her trash with the intention of throwing it away with his cardboard cone that was almost out of the cotton candy attached to it. "Take singles?" he asked. He's a stripper. He's like a bottomless pit of one and five dollars bills, though it really isn't that rare when he gets a twenty or even a fifty. Sometimes, if someone really likes him they'll hire him for a private show for hundreds. It's nice to work in an upscale club instead of teasers or hooters for men. What would that be called? Honkers? Hangers?

"How about free rides?" he asked. "I'll pay your tickets for your company." He pulled a roll of tickets out of his pocket.

Diane considers this offer. Rides. Hmmm. She hasn't been on a ride in a million freaking years. So perhaps - just perhaps - it could be fun. Which would be a novel thing. Fun without alcohol. Could her system take the shock?

While she's thinking about it, she offers him the cardboard paper stick. Then she gives Vaughan a wide smile. "Throw in a Coke and some french fries, and perhaps we'll have a deal."

Just 'cause that bloody apple made her realise that she was hungry. She's been, ahem, dieting, but she can never resist shiny sugary things. Once you start eating you realise how hungry you actually are. And then you just want more food.

Vaughan took the stick, chewed off the last of the cotton candy and savored it as it dissolved into a wet lump of sugar in his mouth. He swallowed and put the apple candy stick inside the cone tube.

He slumped down into a low slouch, making him even shorter then he was in the first place, dropping his arms and looking over all thoroughly defeated. "You will get your french fries, they will tempt me, and then my diet is effectively ruined this week." He smiled and straightened back up. He holds out his hand. "It's a deal."

Diane shakes the hand. Her nails are long and raggy, the last of the red polish clinging desperately. Her bottle's gone all sticky and she's not sure she can splurge on anymore at the moment. Damn everything for being so expensive.

"That was my diet too," she admits, retrieving her hand. She has this thing about shaking hands, and she's running her palm along her jeans to rid it of Vaughan's essence. "But fuck it. I was hungry. Am hungry. Also, Diane."

Yeah, that's the proper way to introduce oneself.

Hey, it got the point across Introduction is Introduction.

Vaughan's hands are manicured, his nails clipped back and buffed shiny. Hey, he's a stripper. Appearances count.

"Well then, Diane, we will blow our diets all to hell together." He grinned. "I'm Vaughan," he replied. He held his hand out as if to usher her onward to the line for the rollercoaster. "Shall we?"

Well, if he's paying, there's any number of things Diane might be willing to blow to hell. She allows herself to be directed in the general direction of the rollercoaster. The sight of the line is tripping a strong sense of deja vu and a strong, vague memory. Candyman blasting - annoying bloody song - and a hand, small and sticky, in hers. Voices, an annoyed Scottish brogue and someone else.

She banishes the memory, hurriedly and smiles at Vaughan. "It's my sincere pleasure to meet you," she says. It is. Usaully is wouldn't be, but french fries really do something to soften new meetings. "And yeah, I guess we shall."

The word sounds a little funny with her American drawl. It's not just the accent, of course. It's Diane. Shall is not one of her usaul words. Usaully that would be an ungrammatical 'gonna'.

Vaughan smiled and dropped the garbage in the trash cans as he passed.

"And mine as well," he replied to her sincere pleasure to meet him. He followed her into the double bars that formed the line. He moved himself along by putting his weight on the bars and swinging his feet ahead, letting go of the bar and landing a few feet ahead on his feet only to do it again. He wound up only a foot behind her and smiled. "Does the lines in an amusement park feel like being a herded cow to you? I always feel like I'm being herded."

Diane purses her lips. Honestly, the suggestion that she is a cow has never done anything for her. Not that she cares about her weight - it could be lower, but it's not. It's not a problem. On the other hand, she'd prefer the other c-word to cow.

"Honestly, I don't come to them much," she says, looking at the mass of people. "Admission fees and whatever. I doubt anyone's gonna mistake you for a cow, anyway." More like a puppy dog. A strange puppy-dog that may just be feral and may just savage you to death, if it doesn't give you a big slobbery kiss and beg to be taken home.

He made a soft snickering sound. "Yeah well still. I always get this foreboding feeling that I'm marching into the slaughter house." He shook his head. "Or perhaps that's the feeling I just get when i'm about to get on a machine that will hurl me through a maze of twists, turns, and drops at seventy miles per hour."

Vaughan could be a puppy. His name, Vaughan Wolf, after all means little wolf. Of course, then you've got Diamond slapped right into the middle of the name and it disrupts the translation. Still, he's talkative, he loves attention, and he loves people. He could be a puppy.

"So what compelled you to come today then?" he asked.

"It won't kill you," she points out, even though it's pretty obvious. "Well, it might. But prolly not. It can't be worse then Sunday mornings."

She shrugs and wonders if honesty was part of the deal, and deciding that it was not, offers that there was "nothing better to do. Squandering what money I had left seemed like a reasonable activity. So here I came. Anyway, it's sunny."

Like sunshine justifies everything. But it has rained so much lately.

Vaughan smiled. "Yes well I come often and just because it pleases me to do so."

Vaughan did that often, doing something just because it would please him at that given moment in time. Even if tomorrow he should wake up and think 'damn, I told myself not to do that. I knew I shouldn't have.' What is life for if not to do what you want with the short amount of time that you have left on it.

People always counted their birthdays upwards. One, two, three. Vaughan isn't pessimistic but he sees birthdays as a countdown. The day you are born, your days are numbered and from that day on you count down the days to the day it's all over. It's why he does what he wants. Next year he may never get the chance too.

"Do you like roller coasters?" he asked, wondering if he's weaseled her into doing something she feared.

"No idea, honestly," Diane says, as if honesty is something she clings to. The memory is coming back. Hot sun and that weird metallic smell that was... Anyway. "I've not been on one in a forever. Once when I was a little kid, I think."

Diane's pretty much willing to try something once, or twice, if it looks like it could be fun, or if she's going to get chips out of it. Free food is a huge motiviation in life. Not quite as much as free beer, but these days, it's a strong one.


"I'm not scared of them, if that's what you mean," she adds. Fear is, in her mind, a reasonable and sane thing - but only if there's something to be scared of. As she's just pointed out, no one has ever died of a rollarcoaster. Damn few people, anyway.

People have died on coasters, many people for many different reasons. Vaughan isn't about to point this out and give her a reason to run away from the coaster. He's more intelligent then that.

"So..." He pressed his lips together, then smiled when the line surged forward. He did the swing/hop thing again until the line stopped once more. "So I guess saying "you come here often" is a might bit useless, eh?" He was in a very good mood today. "How about 'fries and soda at an amusement park suck and are greatly overpriced.' and I will now suggest that we go to ... Iunno, Micky D's or the Diner or something."

"It would be exceedingly useless," Diane agrees, "as we've more or less established that no, I don't."

Last time she went to the diner, it was a bit weird. She had lunch with a very queer man - and not a gay one, either. Or had it been breakfast? She did have fries, though. And they were relatively cheap. "I don't like MacDonald's fries," she tells Vaughan with a dead seriousness that she reserves for that particular form of potato. "They're frozen."

Perhaps she'll be making a habit of eating fries with strange men at the diner. It would seem a strange one but... everyone has their little quirks.

He smiled when she said they were frozen fries.

"They're greasy," he added. He pat his flat belly. "This baby pays my way, I can't afford to put all that greasy, cheap generic food in there." He grinned. "I like the diner anyways. It's quieter and...well...just better. You have all the screaming brats at McDonalds and you have well behaved kiddlings at the diner." He grinned. Vaughan loved kids, especially well behaved ones.

And the really fucking bizarre men, too, Diane wants to add. She doesn't. She smiles and nods like she has a clue. What's she doing here? Here, with this more then slightly questionable guy. Oh. She's getting chips, right.

"Kids," she says. She leaves it at that. "Yeah, the diner's nice."

A pathetic statement - almost as generic as McDonald's' food - but she can't be bothered to construct something more intellegent. She's content to scream 'highschool drop-out' at least until she's got this guy's measure.

Vuaghan smiled. "Yeah," he agreed. "Kids." and he rolled his eyes. The line moved and he continued the swing/hop system again until the line stopped, leaving them standing almost to the part of the line where the line splits from a single line to a dozen smaller lines to divid the cars.

"What?" he asked, "you don't like kids?"

"Kids, meh," Diane says. She follows along behind his hop-swingng. "I guess I like kids. High qualitity and low quantities of kids are good."

The memory is lurking. Children, children's voices and little hands grabbing at her clothes and at her arm, wanting candy. Wanting to go on the merry-go-round.

"I like kids," he tells her, stopping and turning around to face her. "I want two. I want a little girl with blue eyes and a big smile and I want a little boy with my hair and the personality of prince charming," he said pointing at his curly, rich hair. "They will be polite and fun and I will be the father who plays on the jungle gym with them, chasing them around like a big boogie monster."

He laughed. "D'you have any brothers or sisters?" he asked, sobering slightly.

Diane wants a baby, sure. One of her friends is pregnant, and she's just as jealous as can be. Happy - but jealous. She wouldn't trust herself with a kid.

"I'm sure you'll make a wonderful father," she says. Whether or not she's being sincere is slightly difficult to determine. "And..."

Does she have any brothers or sisters? "Do you?"

He looked at the ground, then back up. "No. I'm an only child."

He wondered why all of his questions were shot back to him without ever having them answered by her first. It wouldn't surprise him if she didn't trust him. She had just met him, after all. He smiled, he is not discouraged.

"So, do you?" he asked again.

The line moved and they were herded into the separate lines. "This is the part where I feel like being ushered into the slaughter house.

"Yeah, you seem like an only child," she agrees. "Wasn't there a movie like that? Uhm... I can't remember what it was called. There were quite a few of them. One of those cheap horror flicks with too many sequels. Teenagers getting murdered by a rollercoaster or something..."

It's not a problem of trust, really. It's a problem of questions. Do they really have answers? Diane thinks not. But it doesn't matter so much. She can always make them up if they don't. "And yeah, I had siblings. Have. Siblings."

"Yeah but it started with a plane didn't it?" He asked. "Final Destination, right? The last movie was a roller coaster."

He turned around again to face the roller coaster, his arms flexed when he lifted himself on the poles, picking his feet up. He stayed like that for several seconds, considering her answer, then he put his feet back down and turned around again to face her.

"Had? How many did you have?" He didn't say had? as in what do you mean. He said it as if he were confirming he should use past tense or not.

Diane's eyes are a hard green - like a pebble on a beach - but she doesn't quite meet his. "Yeah, that was the movie," she agrees. She didn't see it. She doesn't much do horror movies. Give her some sci-fi any day. Or action. Something were you actuaully care if the people make it out alive.

"Does it matter," she wants to know. She's twisting a faded red strand of hair around on of her fingers, and the finger has a black ring on it, shaped like a butterfly.

Vaughan is a SciFi junkie. Books and movies. Vampires and werewolves are his specialty.

"It matters cause it's part of who you are," he replied. But then he shrugged. "But I guess it doesn't matter enough to bother you with it if you want me to drop it," he added. "I wanted brothers and sisters some of the time," he said instead of asking more questions. "My parents couldn't afford it. They could hardly afford me. Other times I was the happiest kid in the world that I was their only one. No one to fight with, no one to worry about getting more attention then them. Course, that meant no one to play with either."

Their coaster pulled up. He waited for the bar to open to them. "You put your hands up on the drops, right?" he asked as if it would even matter.

"People," Diane says, "put their hands up on the drops. I've not been on a rollercoaster, like I said. Not in ages."

The memory has disentegrated now, like an old dress or blouse too long in storage.

She resists the urge to point out that if he wanted someone to play with, he could have gone and made some friends. He probably did. "I have... two sisters and brothers. So to speak."

Parental attention had been in short supply, she could have added, but she didn't.

"He liked to watch Star Trek with me."

She feels as though that particular brother deserves some mention - simply because he was a reasonably good sort of sibling. He never really felt like a sibling. More of a friend, or a roomate.

"Not all people. Only the ones willing to let go" He smiled. Vaughan has a thing about the difference between people who cling to the earth like a life line and those who are willing to let go of everything, willing to let go and see what happens. "hold your hands up," he says, getting into the car and pulling his chest bar down.

"What was his name?" he asked. He noticed that this brother of the two brothers and sisters was worth mentioning. Therefore he held importance.

Diane climbs into the car after him. Her thigh is pressed against his, and she can feel the holes in his jeans through the denim of her own. She obliges him by holding her hands up so he can put the bar down.

"Ehm. Alec. He liked Janeway from Voyager and he liked drinking shandies. His accent was almost incomphensible, but he was a perfect mimic. He's not quite as past tense as I'm making him sound, I suppose. I dunno why."

"There you go," he said, reaching across and pushing her chest bar down too. It was hard to put your hands up on rides that went upside down since they had the thick chest bars that held you down and left no room between your bar and your partners bar to put both arms.

"So long as he isn't a past tense for a bad reason," he told her with a frown that said people being past tense for bad reasons was deeper to him then to most people.

"Mmm." She's looking over at other people on the ride and over the queue. Her eyes are restless. Perhaps she's looking for someone, or perhaps she's just looking. People watching is such an amusing hobby.

Although, her current companion bears some scrutiny himself. She's unsure what to make of him. Nice hair, definately. Much more alive then hers - which has suffered much, and undeservedly. Bad jeans.

Beyond that, she has yet to reach a conclusion.