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[ Thot’s jaws chew themselves back into shape, popping wet back into their sockets for her to lick her chops over the emptied box. She scuttles to the edge of the dresser and looks down to the floor, far below for her spindly legs.

An anxious tremor of her tail sees her looking to Silas for help.

But he’s sliding stoat smooth into bed beside Fitcher to better see what she’s dismissing, and also the little black bag with a pretty ring, plucked out from her shuffling with a deft turn of his wrist. He has fingers. ]

She must be a good friend, [ he remarks, very casually, as he upends the bag over his palm. ]

[Fitcher's makes an agreeable humming noise as she flicks through a few pages drawn free from a thin protective leather folio.]

Or I am.

[is a belated punchline, underscored by the sly look she shoots his way over the edge of the papers.

The ring is pretty and its setting distinct enough that it might risk identification were it to go missing. But nothing six months spent cooling in a pocket wouldn't fix. Maybe it's enchanted. Who can say? Definitely not me who would never think ahead far enough to spend AC points on a rando magic ring but always kind of wishes I was that person because that would be fun.]

Mm. [ Silas returns the look. Or she is.

Supported on his elbow, he draws one knee up as he turns the ring over in the light, something uniquely fiendish about pulling one’s boots up onto the duvet of a stranger. It looks like it might fit -- sized up against his gloved knuckles.

Back into the bag it goes, and the bag behind his lapel with the comb, just as Thot fumbles herself off the edge of the dresser and lands with a sound like a coin purse hitting the floor. Silas ignores her shaking off the impact (jingle jangle, she’s fine) in favor of the papers Fitcher has drawn out and a flask he’s produced from the region of his belt. ]

Are we using the window or the front door?

[ No reason. ]

[Thot spilling across the floor briefly draws the eye, but prompts no glance toward the bedroom door. No beat of quiet to listen to approaching footsteps or to wait for some alteration in the murmuring sounds of the not too distant company. If that were all it took to spoil the evening, they'd have bigger problems to concern themselves with.]

I'm not much for heights.

[Fitcher turns a few pages further through her current sheaf and then, with a dismissive flick of the wrist shunts them back into their folio. This she folds in half and tucks under the packet of letters as if out of obligation. Other documents must go missing alongside the letters, after all.

She looks at him—slightly up at him, given her lounging.]

I suppose we can't stay for the rest of the party.

[Ha ha.]

No, I suppose not.

[ He agrees down into the act of working the cork out of the neck of his flask, murmured, distracted. The acrid stink of rotgut marks his success, sharp in the air. He swigs before he offers it out to her, eyes lifted to fine moulding around the ceiling, furniture they haven’t yet turned over in search of hidden compartments and probably won’t.

This is just fallout from a bad breakup.

The bed is a nice bed, though. And the duvet is a nice duvet. He draws his second boot up onto it to straighten himself out where he’s propped up, luxurious. Comfortable.

And quiet, for a moment, apart from a muffled jingling amidst the tippy tap of little claws. ]

You've never told me your name.

Edited 2022-03-13 20:16 (UTC)

[The liquor from the flask goes down with all the ease of chewing gravel. Fitcher sucks in air to follow after it. She takes a second, smaller swig before returning the flask.]

I didn't, did I.

[As if somehow this is a thing one might forget as easily as leaving a shirt with a laundress. With a rustle of papers, Fitcher idly shifts the spoils from raiding the mantle compartment aside. There is a jaunty good humor to the angle of her chin as its propped on her knuckles. In the meager candle light, her eyes are very dark.]

Care to hazard a guess?

[ The scruffy lines around his mouth take on a wry twist, shadows folded in around a smile that never quite surfaces once he’s turned his notched ear to face her. Her eyes have a way of catching in him, a barbed hold on his attention.

He thumbs the cork blind back into his bottle. ]

No.

[ Thank you, courtesy borderline in its obstinance. Mister Dickerson won’t hazard a guess. ]

[In that warmed darkness with her chin propped on her long hand, Fitcher watches him for just the narrowest moment—not the study of dissection or some measuring pause, just looking. Click, click, goes the scratching pad of little feet elsewhere in the room.

Well, then. If they're being candid:]

It's Serafine.

[ There’s some cost to his asking -- the desire to know finally weighed over the more sensible need not to. Serafine feels true, in the low light and with her looking at him. ]

Serafine. [ He tries it out, just as watchful.

After a pause, he confesses: ]

My most promising guess was ‘Siobhan.’

'Siobhan.'

[It prompts some impression of a smile—residual warmth felt through making contact with a thing left in the sun. She doesn't laugh, but could.]

It's not bad.

[ It would be an ordeal for them to have sex in this room. They are both in layers. The host could over-indulge or find someone of his own to retire early with.

His study of her warm beside him fogs his calculation, dry humor faded in his distraction.

He leans to kiss her, a muffled creak from the mattress under the sink of his elbow. There’s restraint to it -- a reasonable compromise. Very responsible. ]

[Extremely. That's why she slips her long hand up to idly scratch her fingernails at bristle of his cheek rather than setting it on his thigh. She doesn't even question the discipline, though it would be easy to do it with just her mouth. They're incredibly reasonable, the pair of them.

And here, Fitcher does laugh—a low gravel sound sliding into the space that follows after all this responsibility.]

It was good of you to come with me when I asked.

[ Silas shows his teeth into her laugh, breath into breath, his free hand coursed light down her midline. Ostensibly neutral territory. ]

I would never pass by the opportunity for a burglary in Hightown.

[ He means it, arch, and a little sinister, and -- Thot flings herself up at their feet in a scribble of legs and tail and pinched teeth to test the duvet out for herself, her eyes flashing copper in the candlelight. The scrape of her claws at the brocade is a real mood killer, forceful enough to rattle the spoils in her gut. Very helpful.

With a glance by way of apology, Dick rolls back enough to fish his dropped flask out from beneath his seat, contact broken with the magic. ]

Is there anything else you want to investigate before we abscond?

Not anymore, [warrants arched eyebrows if not a full waggle.

With a soft sigh of the mattress under that rich duvet, Fitcher draws herself up to something nearer sitting than lounging. The slim folio and the letters are tucked into some interior pocket with only the most incidental crunching of parchment. If the proximity of the little scrabbling creatures pricks at her sensibilities, no sign of it shows.

(Is that good or bad?)]

Was this your business where you came from too, or is it an acquired habit? Between the parts where you're meant to be saving the world, I mean.

[Should she be taking stock of her rings after he leaves the room?, In the joke communicated with a look as Fitcher flicks her skirts out of the way of sliding free from the bed.]

[ With the flask slotted away and his ‘creature’ scooped up under her chest and held close to his side, he holds eye contact on his way to swinging himself off the far side of the mattress. Oh my. ]

I spent time with the thieves guild as a function of my regular duties.

[ He deposits Thot gently at his feet and she scuttles with wind-up toy imprecision for the door to sniff at the crack. ]

Adequate compensation is a challenge for individuals of my standing.

[ Ergo, vis-a-vis. ]

[There, the bed between them and here the candle illuminating the shape of her hand and some glow of Fitcher's cream colored skirts where they peek between the fall of that bottle green coat.]

Guilded? My, Silas. I'd had no idea your resume was so extensive.

[She fetches up the candle, the glint of her dark eye and the cheeky slant of her smile briefly lit—]

You ought to consider marrying well should you ever return to that place. I've heard promising things.

[—before it's extinguished, and the dark closes back again. Time to go.]

Mm.

[ If only. The light snuffs out; there’s the sound and stir of him stepping away in the collapse of darkness around them. ]

I’m relying on Loxley to employ me once he’s romanced a princess.

[ They are almost certainly going to die before he has the chance. He sweeps up a damp fan from the dresser in passing, the folded wooden frame too rigid to have navigated the coil of Thot’s weird doggy body. She’s blinked up at him slowly from her post -- silent assurance of an all clear that he trusts enough to roll the lock and open the door inward.

Fitchers first. ]

Edited 2022-03-15 04:38 (UTC)

[As with a great deal of the invitations Fitcher is extended, she takes him up on this one—slipping wordlessly past Silas into the bar of soft light and so the corridor beyond.

It isn't until they've successfully navigated back through the house—coasting idly along the fringe of the part, pausing once while he and Thot wait in a shadow while she accepts a drink off a tray and makes small talk with a two ladies at the very margins of the evening until they eventually pass on, allowing Fitcher to down the rest of the drink and then scurry along—and are emerging from it that she picks up where they'd left off as easily as if there had been no taut action sequence between points a and z.]

Any princess, or do you have a particular one in mind?

[The evening has cooled considerably since last they were in it. The air smells like rain.]

[ Bold (or fatalistic) enough to have fanned himself in the periphery of Fitcher’s wining and dining, Silas has fallen into step with her in the night. Thot weaves across the cobbles ahead of them, abuzz with the stink of city vermin. ]

We’ve just come upon one in a bog I have my eye on.

[ As a matter of fact. He’s only just now slotting the fan away on his person. Bonus booty. ]

She’s masquerading as a cavalier.

Edited (fuccs sake) 2022-03-15 05:25 (UTC)

[Ah yes, bogs. The ordinary place to find eligible princesses.

(Fitcher has already begun to shed her coat, deftly turning it inside out and re-donning it so as to disappear the bright bottle green in favor of the black lining.)]

How does Loxley feel about this arrangement?

I haven’t consulted him.

[ Matter-of-fact and only a little sly as she changes the coat in for out, he sets to unfastening his own coat once she’s finished. Less clever, he simply folds it crisp over his arm as they walk. ]

I’m certain he doesn’t know who she is.

[Her hum of reply is considering as Fitcher measures something in her head. Loxley's affable nature versus what she judges from distance to be a habit for—what? Independence. Something like that, maybe. Or maybe she is doing an entirely different sort of mental calculus, for what she eventually says is—]

I had a similar arrangement made on my behalf and I've no complaints.

[More or less.]

I'm sure he'll be a good sport about the whole thing.

I hope no one believes I’m a wealthy royal in disguise.

[ His sidelong regard takes on a conspiratorial slant -- imagine the scandal, some distant overseer sorely disappointed. Certainly eligible princes and princesses have come in stranger shapes than the tall balding backscrubber in a vest next to her. ]

I won’t hold it against him if he marries his first mate instead, provided he doesn’t leave me to tend to the rest of our party alone.

[ It must not be a very serious arrangement, then. Best laid plans of mice and dead men. She’ll see him weighing out the inevitable question when he looks to her again, gauging its importance, whether or not he wants to ask at all. Was she married? ]

I can't imagine he would choose to leave you so exposed.

[Vulnerable. That's the word she could have chosen, but didn't (and she is immune to the subtext of that look—).

A few brisk turns in succession. A staircase. It's amazing how little effort it takes to move from Kirkwall's Hightown to everywhere else. Similarly: how easy it would be to say nothing at all.

And yet.]

He died some years ago.

No.

[ Levity leaves him with a thought for the cot standing idle in his quarters, sheets crisp save for the occasional wrinkle of little nug hands whenever one of his cursed brood takes ill. They might be helpful in the disposal of his corpse should Thot fail to alert him to an intruder in the night.

He tucks his own hands into his pockets against the cold, already nipped pink in the ears. ]

No such trouble.

[ Another glance -- they’ve crested the stair before he says so. A less striking admission.

He's also sorry for asking without having asked. ]

How are you feeling about the ferry?

Edited (how did we even wind up in brackets really this is YOUR fault) 2022-03-16 03:54 (UTC)

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