He will stay away from Riftwatch for as long as he can tolerate the feeling of his carpals burning themselves to cinders from the inside out and then he will be interrogated and perhaps relieved or suspended from duty. They’d housed Benedict in the dungeon for a while, he knows, after some real or perceived betrayal.
If he’s very motivated he might contact Yseult first to inform her that Madame Fitcher did not answer his call.
Right now he is smoking and reaching to position Fitcher’s hat over himself after all, an increasingly formless ennui to the roadkill jumble of his bones on this blanket. Ribs ready to picked open.
It is too bad. He’d rather not look at her after she’s said so.
Fitcher accepts it, as she does the treatment of her very jaunty hat. Sitting there in the sunshine, feeling the heat on the back of her neck, she helps with idly smoking the joint down to a stub—unhurried and more or less unbothered by the salt tinged heat, or where she is or isn't going once they've elected to be finished here. If there are indeed no Venatori agents on the horizon, then they have little to do save to elect to pack their things.
It's only after a long stretch of silence—not companionable but not anything else either—, the haze stripped away by the drifting air but the smell lingering, that she moves to extract her thigh from across him and out from under the drifting cycle of his hand. It affords her the capacity to lean forward, to lean down. To touch his scruffy jaw and press a skunky kiss to his cheek.
"You'll make a fine Warden. And if you don't—" Then what? "Then maybe I'll see you again, hmm?"
She smiles at him, toothy. Eventually, someone finds him.
His cheek is rough with grit, flexed raw under her touch.
I hope not would be a dishonest thing for him to say, but the lines are there, wry around his mouth and in the tilt of his nose after her.
“I will miss you,” is true, and more important in the scheme of the rapid and unexpected exits Rifters sometimes make from this plane. Farewells are a luxury. His ability to deliver this one without the sentiment squeezing in his throat is in large part owed to the time he’s had to lie there thinking about it, and the dozens of ways this might’ve gone worse.
Those things, and all the elfroot. He turns loose the last button on her shirt while she’s still leaned over him.
Her laugh is pleasantly low, the smokiest thing currently in residence on the blanket.
"And interfere with yours and Captain's bond? I wouldn't dare."
With a briefer, cheekier kiss, Fitcher straightens and pats him there on the ribs. Cheer up, Silas. Look at them, both hale and fit. Why, given just a few degrees less fondness in either direction and they might be in an altogether different state at present. Killing him would have soured her on the day. The week. Maybe the whole long string of them since she'd arrived in Kirkwall.
So maybe, in deference to all this good will—
"Give me an hour, then follow me to Ostwick. I'll see that your story bears up. Agreed?"
Seldom cheerful, Silas tolerates the pat with a steady eye for her keeping her word on this most important matter of the good Captain. With that last button undone, he lets his hand fall back to the blanket. There are scraps of grass there for him to pick at, the slow wind of a pinstriped snake tasting the far edge in search of his wrist.
If there is a sense that she might say something further, her long hand having gentled over his side and something less pleased lingering in the corner of her smiling mouth, Fitcher ultimately decides to keep it to herself. It's dismissed with another brief pat before she draws away to collect her things.
In short order, she's sorted stockings and various trouser buttons and the things between them. She doesn't bother with any of the shirt buttons, and her belt is slung jauntily over a shoulder rather than cinched about the waist. The hat is raised off his person, interior examined, and with a slanting look toward Silas's face is returned to protect the sun from getting an eye full. The pipe migrates back behind her ear.
If you change your mind—
No.
"If those Vints show up before you leave, tell them they've terrible timing," she says, oofing up off the ground to her feet. She dusts her backside with an exaggerated to do and bothers to tuck in only a single wild shirt tail. The toe of a boot pivots to softly graze his side.
"Be well, Silas."
And then Fitcher is off, first swatting through the long grass to fetch the red lacquered crossbow and its quiver before turning to take a path ostensibly very similar to the one he'd earlier cut.
They’d agreed upon the conditions of this arrangement back in Hasmal.
So he doesn’t reach to stop her drawing away, raising up on the kickstand of one elbow instead to better follow her with his eyes while buttons and belts are sorted. That he can’t keep heartache from gripping hollow at his face is a failing of whatever creationary history humans have on this plane, and the fact that it in no way shape or form involved fucking snakes.
But it isn’t as naked as he is, hemmed up in grit and prickle and eventually a shift of his posture into a full sit, after she’s returned her hat to him.
Easy to miss, particularly while otherwise occupied. He has the space of his sit to compose himself in while she rustles about, with a snake spiraling lazy up his arm and a sunburn baking into the knots in his shoulders, the tousle of his scalp.
The nudge of her boot toe finds him self-contained and quiet, his chin tucked.
It wins a pause in her trajectory, that name. The angle of her shoulders pivots briefly back in his direction, and there on her face is produced some genuine flashing smile and a pleased laugh
—(as there are only ever two options forward in these matters, and that is to either find them very sad or to choose to be cheered by them; how rare it is to hear that name spoken aloud, and how charming that he should choose it)—
which she carries with her as she traipses off with a jingling of an undone belt buckle, and the idle sway of the full quiver against her thigh. She disappears from the overlook. She, and the red mule, and the total of her belongings disappear from their little camp well short of that allotted hour. Soon, Serafine Tokar will disappear from Ostwick too, leaving only indications of her brief stay there and little evidence as to her direction after. How easy it can be to slip back into a world where no one knows your habits, or your sentiments, or your name if you only let it.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2022-07-31 09:33 pm (UTC)He will stay away from Riftwatch for as long as he can tolerate the feeling of his carpals burning themselves to cinders from the inside out and then he will be interrogated and perhaps relieved or suspended from duty. They’d housed Benedict in the dungeon for a while, he knows, after some real or perceived betrayal.
If he’s very motivated he might contact Yseult first to inform her that Madame Fitcher did not answer his call.
Right now he is smoking and reaching to position Fitcher’s hat over himself after all, an increasingly formless ennui to the roadkill jumble of his bones on this blanket. Ribs ready to picked open.
It is too bad. He’d rather not look at her after she’s said so.
But he does offer the joint back out.
no subject
Date: 2022-07-31 11:30 pm (UTC)It's only after a long stretch of silence—not companionable but not anything else either—, the haze stripped away by the drifting air but the smell lingering, that she moves to extract her thigh from across him and out from under the drifting cycle of his hand. It affords her the capacity to lean forward, to lean down. To touch his scruffy jaw and press a skunky kiss to his cheek.
"You'll make a fine Warden. And if you don't—" Then what? "Then maybe I'll see you again, hmm?"
She smiles at him, toothy. Eventually, someone finds him.
no subject
Date: 2022-08-01 06:09 am (UTC)I hope not would be a dishonest thing for him to say, but the lines are there, wry around his mouth and in the tilt of his nose after her.
“I will miss you,” is true, and more important in the scheme of the rapid and unexpected exits Rifters sometimes make from this plane. Farewells are a luxury. His ability to deliver this one without the sentiment squeezing in his throat is in large part owed to the time he’s had to lie there thinking about it, and the dozens of ways this might’ve gone worse.
Those things, and all the elfroot. He turns loose the last button on her shirt while she’s still leaned over him.
“Please don’t take my horse.”
no subject
Date: 2022-08-01 06:50 am (UTC)"And interfere with yours and Captain's bond? I wouldn't dare."
With a briefer, cheekier kiss, Fitcher straightens and pats him there on the ribs. Cheer up, Silas. Look at them, both hale and fit. Why, given just a few degrees less fondness in either direction and they might be in an altogether different state at present. Killing him would have soured her on the day. The week. Maybe the whole long string of them since she'd arrived in Kirkwall.
So maybe, in deference to all this good will—
"Give me an hour, then follow me to Ostwick. I'll see that your story bears up. Agreed?"
(Yes. She's going to miss him too.)
no subject
Date: 2022-08-02 08:56 am (UTC)“Alright.”
It’s agreed. The hat stays.
“I’ll remain here.”
no subject
Date: 2022-08-02 02:38 pm (UTC)In short order, she's sorted stockings and various trouser buttons and the things between them. She doesn't bother with any of the shirt buttons, and her belt is slung jauntily over a shoulder rather than cinched about the waist. The hat is raised off his person, interior examined, and with a slanting look toward Silas's face is returned to protect the sun from getting an eye full. The pipe migrates back behind her ear.
If you change your mind—
No.
"If those Vints show up before you leave, tell them they've terrible timing," she says, oofing up off the ground to her feet. She dusts her backside with an exaggerated to do and bothers to tuck in only a single wild shirt tail. The toe of a boot pivots to softly graze his side.
"Be well, Silas."
And then Fitcher is off, first swatting through the long grass to fetch the red lacquered crossbow and its quiver before turning to take a path ostensibly very similar to the one he'd earlier cut.
no subject
Date: 2022-08-06 11:41 pm (UTC)So he doesn’t reach to stop her drawing away, raising up on the kickstand of one elbow instead to better follow her with his eyes while buttons and belts are sorted. That he can’t keep heartache from gripping hollow at his face is a failing of whatever creationary history humans have on this plane, and the fact that it in no way shape or form involved fucking snakes.
But it isn’t as naked as he is, hemmed up in grit and prickle and eventually a shift of his posture into a full sit, after she’s returned her hat to him.
Easy to miss, particularly while otherwise occupied. He has the space of his sit to compose himself in while she rustles about, with a snake spiraling lazy up his arm and a sunburn baking into the knots in his shoulders, the tousle of his scalp.
The nudge of her boot toe finds him self-contained and quiet, his chin tucked.
“Goodbye, Serafine.”
no subject
Date: 2022-08-08 03:57 am (UTC)—(as there are only ever two options forward in these matters, and that is to either find them very sad or to choose to be cheered by them; how rare it is to hear that name spoken aloud, and how charming that he should choose it)—
which she carries with her as she traipses off with a jingling of an undone belt buckle, and the idle sway of the full quiver against her thigh. She disappears from the overlook. She, and the red mule, and the total of her belongings disappear from their little camp well short of that allotted hour. Soon, Serafine Tokar will disappear from Ostwick too, leaving only indications of her brief stay there and little evidence as to her direction after. How easy it can be to slip back into a world where no one knows your habits, or your sentiments, or your name if you only let it.