The worn leather stool creaked under Professor Ellis's weight as a wave of stale cigarette smoke and spilled whiskey washed over him. This was Danny's, and it was his kind of place -- a sanctuary of dim lights and sticky tables, far removed from the austere halls of academia he'd once trod. Semi-retired now, his world had narrowed to these four walls and the company he found within them.
"Mark, old boy" he slurred, the bourbon warming its way down his throat "You know I never miss a chance to expand my artistic horizons."
Mark, a weathered man who seemed as much part of the bar as the dusty bottles slid a fresh glass towards him. "You won't be disappointed then Professor. Anya the new girl, she's something else. A touch of fire, that one."
The professor chuckled the sound raspy in the smoky air. Years ago it was another bar and another friend -- the brilliant irreverent Richard Feynman -- who'd taught him that dive joints were the true canvases of life. Feynman had filled his notebooks with scribbled equations and sketches of dancers teaching the young professor to find the extraordinary in the most unexpected places.
"Well then" he gestured grandly his eyes twinkling "an introduction to this fiery maiden is in order wouldn't you agree?"
Later that night as the music throbbed and the spotlight swung across the stage Anya appeared. Clad in silks the color of embers she was a whirlwind of motion and defiance. Not beautiful in the conventional sense but arresting, untamed. It wasn't the lithe grace of her movements that drew his eye but the intensity burning beneath the surface.
The professor's fingers itched for his worn notebook, but he wasn't here to sketch this time. He was here to watch, to remember what it felt like to have fire in your veins instead of the slow burn of a life winding down.
After the set Mark led Anya over a hint of amusement in his eyes. "Anya meet the professor an old friend. Professor this is Anya your fiery new muse."
Her eyes dark and fathomless regarded him with cool curiosity. "So you're the regular Mark keeps talking about?" "The artist?"
"Well this is interesting." He leaned in slightly his smile hinting at amusement. "Maybe you're the type who appreciates the finer things. And besides" he paused the smile widening "a man can't help but be drawn to a flame as bright as yours."
A hint of a smile played at the corner of her lips fleeting but genuine. She might have dismissed a younger man but in him she sensed a kindred spirit - an old flame yet to be extinguished. That, the professor decided was the most intriguing sketch of all.
Anya tilted her head to the side. "An observer? Now that's different. All I usually get are eyes wanting to strip me bare." She spoke with the ease of someone used to the male gaze yet there was a sharpness in her voice an edge he found compelling.
He traced the rim of his glass a contemplative look in his eyes. "Ah but the best observers see beyond the surface my dear. They see the story beneath the skin the fire behind the flicker."
Her laughter was unexpected a burst of genuine amusement. "You talk like one of those poets nobody understands... the old-fashioned kind."
"Perhaps" he conceded, taking a sip of bourbon. "Or perhaps like the old-fashioned sort of dancers there's more to me than meets the eye."
Anya pressed a hand against the cool surface of the bar the silk of her dress whispering against it. "Maybe I won't be in such a hurry to leave tonight" she said, her voice low a spark of something unspoken in her eyes.
The Professor felt a surge of something akin to excitement. It had been years decades perhaps since he'd felt a spark ignite within him. He had a sneaking suspicion that Anya was used to setting men alight but extinguishing them just as quickly. The game as much as the woman promised to be intoxicating.
"I believe" he declared a slow smile spreading across his face "that I would like that very much."
Mark watched them with a knowing grin the faint clink of glasses and the throbbing bass-line of the bar the soundtrack to this peculiar courtship. Here in this neon-lit dive the professor with his Feynman-inspired sketches and the dancer with her fiery spirit seemed an oddly suitable pair. He topped up the professor's drink. This he sensed was the start of a show he wouldn't want to miss.
And so as the city slept Danny's kept its doors open a little later and its lights a little dimmer. Laughter cut through the smoke low and laced with promise, as the professor rediscovered that even in the dwindling embers of an ordinary life an unexpected flame could make all the difference.
Danny's had emptied the last of the drunken patrons stumbling out and blurring into the icy night. Only the soft glow of the bar's sign hummed in the frigid quiet. Anya emerged from the back room trading the shimmer of her stage costume for faded jeans and a worn leather jacket. She still crackled with an untamed energy, though it was held closer now as if reserved for...him.
"So Professor" she drawled perching next to him on the scratched leather stool "Are you the type who likes to talk...or the type who likes to do?"
"That," he mused tracing a condensation ring on the bar "depends very much on the company." His eyes met hers the weathered blue holding a flicker that hadn't been there in years.
Anya's smirk was slow and sultry. "And what do you think your company is like Professor?"
"Well now" he leaned closer voice lowered to a conspiratorial whisper "I'd say she's the kind who knows there's more to pleasure than just skin on skin."
Her eyes widened a fraction surprise mingling with raw interest. Most men saw the dancer the body on display. The professor saw... something else a sharp intellect sparking beneath the sultry façade. It was almost disconcertingly arousing.
"You're not what I expected," she admitted.
"Ah but isn't that the fun of it?" He reached across and traced a line down the worn fabric of her sleeve. "All those layers those secrets..."
Anya shivered the movement rippling through her like a shockwave. "And I suppose you think you can peel them back?"
His chuckle was low and laced with promise. "Not peel, my dear. Unravel, thread by delicate thread, if you'll let me."
The tension crackled in the air between them thick as the leftover cigarette smoke. Anya's heart thrummed against her ribs a beat mirroring the pounding bassline that still echoed in her blood from the stage. He was a challenge something different and she'd never been one to back down.
"My place or yours Professor?" Her voice was husky a dare hanging in the silence.
