"Not if it's a fast-acting poison," is an easier rejoinder to offer up than a response to Richard's gratitude.
Is Ellis joking? It's hard to say. His gaze had followed Thot down to where she's sprawling, all absurdly long limbs. Ellis' fingers trail one long leg carefully before looking back across the table.
"You've been kind to me," Ellis says, because it feels true to him. That earns him something in return from Ellis, who has so few, specific tokens of friendship to give in return. He can do no magic, nor parse any science, and his attempts at navigating friendship feel haphazard at best, but—
The slender bones in Thot’s leggy are all mostly in the right positions, loose in their joints, claws curled, squeezed, and relaxed.
“People should be kind to each other.”
It’s the least anyone can do to not actively make the human or elf or dwarf or qunari experience worse for someone else than it already is, surely. He drinks, matter-of-fact for his own logic.
Ellis' gaze lifts from Thot, beat of quiet carrying that dour thought forward. Richard does a fair amount for Ellis unasked for, often without sufficient return on his investment. It matters to Ellis, that it's acknowledged.
But as for the chickens—
"Thriving, much to their landlady's dismay."
But Ellis isn't interested in talking about the chickens.
"I need to ask a favor. What I meant to ask, after the dream, if you're in a position to hear it."
Richard is too composed to spend the breath he’d pulled in to ask on a sigh. There are more strategic routes he could have taken -- meatier subject matter, better suited to his audience, more barbed wire than signal light. But it’s nothing (or no one) he cares to discuss presently, in this little tavern, with a tankard in hand.
He sets the tankard aside, a twinge of tension along his neck passed off as a nod.
It's not as though Ellis hasn't had time to consider the phrasing of the request. But still, there is an answering quiet. Ellis looks down to the lanky cat sprawling over his lap to put a hand over her bony ribs.
"I was very forthcoming with you in that dream," Ellis says, words coming slowly. "And it would be a kindness, if you were to keep that between us."
“I would argue you were more honest than forthcoming,”
There is a distinction -- one that is important among liars. He takes care to square his tankard evenly between two slats in the table surface, mild to his core.
"Thank you," is easy, what's due to Richard for the promise he's making.
The urge to press further, to elicit some further assurances, rises and falls in his chest. Ellis looks down at his hand resting over Thot's ribs, waits a long moment before adding, with a note of apology, "I shouldn't have said any of it. Not when you had burdens enough of your own."
Some of which had followed him after waking. Richard hadn't deflected and turned from him that day on the steps because he'd woken without any concerns.
There’s an off-axis give to his answering silence -- the torsion of a screw that’s been wound in and out a few too many times in its life stripping as it’s pressed. Resistance is being displaced, rearranged, changed.
“You were speaking from the heart.”
He’s been very fixated on the table these last few seconds, until whatever it is warps free, and he can look up to back assurance with eye contact. So carefully squared, he hefts his tankard to drink.
Having dropped his gaze back to the oozing splay of Thot's limbs across his thigh, whatever expression occurs in relation to the idea of his heart, of having exposed some part of it, is hidden. When he looks back across the table, it's with some wrinkle of a frown worked across his face, but no answer. No contradiction or question, but silent invitation in the lack of response.
Thot’s eyes gleam green in her skull, narrowed now to contented slits over the poke of her fangs. Gradually, she’s rolled to raise her arms up over her head, making the question of balance more precarious if not for the hand Ellis has at her middle.
If there’s an invitation to be read into quiet, Richard lets it lie.
He has ale to polish off, and personal thoughts to pack away while he works his way down to the dregs.
The silence stretches. Ellis' hand remains, gentle and steadying over Thot's belly.
"I'd like to hear what you mean," is said against Ellis' better judgement.
It occurs to him that Richard has seen into him, knows a piece of him that Cathán might have guessed at towards the end but never knew. And Ellis leans on him, in a way that is perhaps unfair.
He glances down to Thot before pushing his own tankard along the table to Richard in unspoken offer.
“My apologies,” says Richard -- his eyes are clear, his composure pristine. “What I mean by what?”
He starts to shake his head at the offer of the second tankard, recalls a previous conversation, and reaches to draw it across to his side after all. Resignation bleeds back in the form of a caught sigh as he does, a trace of shade in his next look. You could’ve just ordered stew.
Under these conditions, a single tankard is plenty.
“I’d anticipated you were likely to have,” Richard pauses to consider his vocabulary and continues, logically, while weighing how ill-advised it would be to start on this second tankard: “an emotional reaction.”
His eyebrows provide an obviously in gentle addendum.
“Because I was complicit in the attempted assassination of the Provost and Miss Poppell.”
Ellis’ confusion is contagious enough for Mr. Dickerson to forget (momentarily) the dilemma of the tankard -- his brow hoods into a harder furrow to match. The exasperation stirred murky at the bottom of his ??? is awfully earnest for this to be some kind of labyrinthine tease.
“You care for them very deeply.”
Defensive tension has crept in behind his ears, too subdued to rig all the way down his shoulders to his wrist. This is all very straightforward.
The second, prodding reference to his feelings is unwelcome, further sparks up something self-conscious and uneasy, but trying to untangle Richard's goal takes momentary precedence over acknowledging that feeling. (Vance's voice, full of accusation: why are you wandering around like you got ducklings?)
"I don't understand the point you're trying to make."
Was it anger? Was that what Richard had been waiting to see? Ellis doesn't know that he can summon it, having burned through all of his fury in the midst of the dream.
His hand stays gentle over Thot's belly, careful as he keeps her pinned more or less steadily.
After a beat spent watching the look on Ellis’ face, Richard unplugs entirely to look away, aside, and there’s the tension hackled in at the scruff of his neck. Beneath Ellis’ fingers, the regular feather of Thot’s heartbeat has quickened into an unsteady jog. Her ears are laid flat where she’s sprawled, wide eyes aimed blank at the ceiling.
“I’m not making a point.”
He traces back at a loss, facing down the possibility that he’s somehow broached this subject entirely on his own.
Having fallen into friendship with a pair of absurdly intelligent people means Ellis isn't any stranger to the sensation of having missed some connecting idea in the course of conversation.
Is it as simple as sitting with that truth? He has carried some variation of it with him for a very long time, ever since he'd admitted that first inkling of it to Wysteria: I am devoted to you. I have been devoted to you and Tony for some time now.
But Richard—
"Do you think I'm angry with you still, for endangering them?"
It’s easy to answer quickly, still aside. Of course not.
He’d be able to tell.
Tipped well out of equilibrium by whatever minor confusion and all the unhappier for the pervasive disorder of it, Richard smooths his whiskers with a pass of his anchor hand. It’s step one of a deliberate process: coiling himself back up after slipping off the side of a log. Zeroing back in on the present.
“It was only relevant to your anger at the time.”
And to any element of surprise he might have hoped for in similar scenarios in the future.
A nod. Ellis' hand lifts, passes carefully from Thot's shoulder to hip, repeats again in a steady loop of movement. There's nothing to be said on it that they haven't already discussed in the dream.
There's no other need to clarify what Richard knows: Ellis cares for them very much. That's as true in this moment as it had been in that dream.
Nothing is said. Ellis' attention hooks on Thot for a moment, perhaps gathering himself, considering a response.
"Can I ask you something about your shard?"
As if the best way to handle the confusion and persistent observation of his feelings is to catapult towards a completely different topic.
The rabbiting of Thot’s heart has receded; when Ellis next looks down, it’s to find her cleaning between her claws with the rasping blue loop of her tongue.
“Please,” is only a little brusque, as consent to change the subject goes.
He hasn’t started on the second ale. He doesn’t seem likely to, for all that he’s kept his thumb hooked through the handle of the tankard, anchoring himself to the table.
He might have asked before, in the garden, after Richard had suffered through the construction of a chicken coop. But he hadn't known then, and the request Richard had made of him wasn't about that kind of pain.
The further they are from confusion, the more collected he seems. Tension carved in close against the bones of his face has abated, particularly around the prickle of his jaw. The lines over and between his brows have eased into more moderate consideration.
“Most often when I’m away from the Gallows. It’s typically mild.”
The knobby joint of Thot's shoulder holds Ellis' attention as he considers that answer. He runs his fingers back and forth there, watching the flustered edge of Richard's expression recede.
"I see," is not an explanation, but is it such a leap to puzzle out who and what Ellis might be thinking of?
Wysteria will say there's nothing to worry about until she's blue in the face. But Ellis' fears for her aren't Richard's to tend to either.
"Does it trouble you?"
Vague. Room for the question to mean anything: the shard, the dream, this conversation. Any of it. All of it.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2021-05-06 08:24 pm (UTC)Is Ellis joking? It's hard to say. His gaze had followed Thot down to where she's sprawling, all absurdly long limbs. Ellis' fingers trail one long leg carefully before looking back across the table.
"You've been kind to me," Ellis says, because it feels true to him. That earns him something in return from Ellis, who has so few, specific tokens of friendship to give in return. He can do no magic, nor parse any science, and his attempts at navigating friendship feel haphazard at best, but—
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Date: 2021-05-07 05:00 pm (UTC)“People should be kind to each other.”
It’s the least anyone can do to not actively make the human or elf or dwarf or qunari experience worse for someone else than it already is, surely. He drinks, matter-of-fact for his own logic.
To the lowest common denominator of decency.
“How are your chickens faring?”
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Date: 2021-05-10 08:27 pm (UTC)Ellis' gaze lifts from Thot, beat of quiet carrying that dour thought forward. Richard does a fair amount for Ellis unasked for, often without sufficient return on his investment. It matters to Ellis, that it's acknowledged.
But as for the chickens—
"Thriving, much to their landlady's dismay."
But Ellis isn't interested in talking about the chickens.
"I need to ask a favor. What I meant to ask, after the dream, if you're in a position to hear it."
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Date: 2021-05-11 05:01 am (UTC)Richard is too composed to spend the breath he’d pulled in to ask on a sigh. There are more strategic routes he could have taken -- meatier subject matter, better suited to his audience, more barbed wire than signal light. But it’s nothing (or no one) he cares to discuss presently, in this little tavern, with a tankard in hand.
He sets the tankard aside, a twinge of tension along his neck passed off as a nod.
Of course. Easy.
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Date: 2021-05-20 07:24 pm (UTC)"I was very forthcoming with you in that dream," Ellis says, words coming slowly. "And it would be a kindness, if you were to keep that between us."
Or better yet—
"And put it from your own mind."
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Date: 2021-05-20 08:34 pm (UTC)There is a distinction -- one that is important among liars. He takes care to square his tankard evenly between two slats in the table surface, mild to his core.
“I won’t discuss what was said with anyone.”
Frictionless.
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Date: 2021-05-24 08:27 pm (UTC)The urge to press further, to elicit some further assurances, rises and falls in his chest. Ellis looks down at his hand resting over Thot's ribs, waits a long moment before adding, with a note of apology, "I shouldn't have said any of it. Not when you had burdens enough of your own."
Some of which had followed him after waking. Richard hadn't deflected and turned from him that day on the steps because he'd woken without any concerns.
no subject
Date: 2021-05-24 09:15 pm (UTC)“You were speaking from the heart.”
He’s been very fixated on the table these last few seconds, until whatever it is warps free, and he can look up to back assurance with eye contact. So carefully squared, he hefts his tankard to drink.
“I know they’re important to you.”
no subject
Date: 2021-05-24 11:52 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-05-25 12:37 am (UTC)If there’s an invitation to be read into quiet, Richard lets it lie.
He has ale to polish off, and personal thoughts to pack away while he works his way down to the dregs.
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Date: 2021-05-25 01:23 am (UTC)"I'd like to hear what you mean," is said against Ellis' better judgement.
It occurs to him that Richard has seen into him, knows a piece of him that Cathán might have guessed at towards the end but never knew. And Ellis leans on him, in a way that is perhaps unfair.
He glances down to Thot before pushing his own tankard along the table to Richard in unspoken offer.
no subject
Date: 2021-05-25 01:40 am (UTC)He starts to shake his head at the offer of the second tankard, recalls a previous conversation, and reaches to draw it across to his side after all. Resignation bleeds back in the form of a caught sigh as he does, a trace of shade in his next look. You could’ve just ordered stew.
Under these conditions, a single tankard is plenty.
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Date: 2021-05-25 02:01 am (UTC)What. Deliberately stepping back from who.
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Date: 2021-05-25 02:28 am (UTC)His eyebrows provide an obviously in gentle addendum.
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Date: 2021-05-25 02:33 am (UTC)Ellis' expression has veered further towards frown, confusion ceding ground to some quiet kind of affront.
"I don't understand why."
Richard has never baited him, but the answer strikes Ellis a little too close to the possibility of it for comfort.
no subject
Date: 2021-05-25 02:58 am (UTC)Ellis’ confusion is contagious enough for Mr. Dickerson to forget (momentarily) the dilemma of the tankard -- his brow hoods into a harder furrow to match. The exasperation stirred murky at the bottom of his ??? is awfully earnest for this to be some kind of labyrinthine tease.
“You care for them very deeply.”
Defensive tension has crept in behind his ears, too subdued to rig all the way down his shoulders to his wrist. This is all very straightforward.
https://i.ibb.co/qFbb9Dn/si8892ij-dg.png
Date: 2021-05-25 03:41 am (UTC)"I don't understand the point you're trying to make."
Was it anger? Was that what Richard had been waiting to see? Ellis doesn't know that he can summon it, having burned through all of his fury in the midst of the dream.
His hand stays gentle over Thot's belly, careful as he keeps her pinned more or less steadily.
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Date: 2021-05-25 04:14 am (UTC)“I’m not making a point.”
He traces back at a loss, facing down the possibility that he’s somehow broached this subject entirely on his own.
“You asked me to explain why it was relevant.”
no subject
Date: 2021-05-25 04:26 am (UTC)Is it as simple as sitting with that truth? He has carried some variation of it with him for a very long time, ever since he'd admitted that first inkling of it to Wysteria: I am devoted to you. I have been devoted to you and Tony for some time now.
But Richard—
"Do you think I'm angry with you still, for endangering them?"
Is that the first question he should have asked?
no subject
Date: 2021-05-25 04:46 am (UTC)It’s easy to answer quickly, still aside. Of course not.
He’d be able to tell.
Tipped well out of equilibrium by whatever minor confusion and all the unhappier for the pervasive disorder of it, Richard smooths his whiskers with a pass of his anchor hand. It’s step one of a deliberate process: coiling himself back up after slipping off the side of a log. Zeroing back in on the present.
“It was only relevant to your anger at the time.”
And to any element of surprise he might have hoped for in similar scenarios in the future.
no subject
Date: 2021-05-25 05:19 am (UTC)There's no other need to clarify what Richard knows: Ellis cares for them very much. That's as true in this moment as it had been in that dream.
Nothing is said. Ellis' attention hooks on Thot for a moment, perhaps gathering himself, considering a response.
"Can I ask you something about your shard?"
As if the best way to handle the confusion and persistent observation of his feelings is to catapult towards a completely different topic.
no subject
Date: 2021-05-25 05:28 am (UTC)“Please,” is only a little brusque, as consent to change the subject goes.
He hasn’t started on the second ale. He doesn’t seem likely to, for all that he’s kept his thumb hooked through the handle of the tankard, anchoring himself to the table.
no subject
Date: 2021-05-25 05:37 am (UTC)Simple, straightforward.
He might have asked before, in the garden, after Richard had suffered through the construction of a chicken coop. But he hadn't known then, and the request Richard had made of him wasn't about that kind of pain.
no subject
Date: 2021-05-25 05:59 am (UTC)The further they are from confusion, the more collected he seems. Tension carved in close against the bones of his face has abated, particularly around the prickle of his jaw. The lines over and between his brows have eased into more moderate consideration.
“Most often when I’m away from the Gallows. It’s typically mild.”
no subject
Date: 2021-05-25 06:11 pm (UTC)"I see," is not an explanation, but is it such a leap to puzzle out who and what Ellis might be thinking of?
Wysteria will say there's nothing to worry about until she's blue in the face. But Ellis' fears for her aren't Richard's to tend to either.
"Does it trouble you?"
Vague. Room for the question to mean anything: the shard, the dream, this conversation. Any of it. All of it.
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