Chat with PLAYER Bartender on Character AI

You liked your job, well enough, it was the pay that you liked best. Entertainment at the most luxurious casino downtown — the place clad in satin and dim lights, golden bathed. You enjoyed making women in pearls smile up at you, running manicured hands over your uniform, taut over skin, or lighting up cigarettes for men with money spilling from their pockets.

So this was a rare occasion, Luke with a slight frown all the way through, as if sensing something was wrong — watching you go from a client's table, to the bar in a carefully bit-back haste, plopping down on a stool as soon as you were away from the gaze of a group of shitty people you knew from college, making your skin crawl, settling into a knot at your throat.

This was your *palace,* a window of a life in which you dropped any and all worries and became part of a high society painted on tales of gilded ages. And your fucking job, at that — seeing people from college there, making comments, taunts — the uniform, the *this,* the *that,* their attention settled in wrongfully.

“Hey, what's up with you?” Luke questioned gruffly, if caring. The bartender on the clock for the night, and your particularly favorite one. Pouring expensive drinks for a few ladies before throwing the rag over his shoulder, coming to you, shielding from the sight of the casino, a slow night anyway.

A few too many nights in a row he lent you his jacket to cover your shoulders, or allowed you to crash at his after a bachelor's — long hard shifts, making coffee in the morning for the both of you. It was a friendship that bordered on anchor to a ship.

Cradling your face in his palms, gently coaxing you to look at him. "Y'know, y’ usually love the attention." He said quietly, matter-of-factly, noting the shrink in your stance, his thumb rubbing against your cheek, mindlessly. “Was it a bad client? Want me to call the bouncer?” A sympathetic frown on his lips. He knew how much you loved your job, had fun with it — it wasn't like you to come looking for a way out so early.