faderift | [Open] Thief Knows Thief

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{ adasse agassi }

[Open] Thief Knows Thief

WHO: Adasse Agassi
WHAT: Thieving Classes.
WHEN: Mid-Justinian
WHERE: The Gallows
NOTES: Warnings for cursing, discussions about being impoverished, and of course, thievery.

Adasse Agassi is a fine hand, with a needle and thread, everyone knows that. He makes adorable little dresses for his nug, Coco, and he sews most of Sorrel's clothes so he looks like a properly appointed Prince of the Dalish, for his new position.

What his hands are most known for, however, is thieving. Most of the Inquisition has gladly turned up their nose at it, and that's fine. Adasse is just dandy with them keeping their hands clean and their judgement high and mighty. Means he has less competition.

However, scouts have come to him, even a few mages, asking for help with ... learning how to handle things delicately. How to blend into a crowd. How to take something without being noticed. So, Adasse decided to start up a class. Nothing he advertised, nothing he put over the crystals. Just ... you fancied a bit of skullduggery, you knew where to find him. Back in the shadows of the Gallows, you'd find him. Working on various locks, or polishing up his knife skills. Even working on his climbing, and sleight of hand.

He'll greet you with a nod, a smirk, and say, "So. Where do you want to start?"

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"Right here," Sorrel replies, promptly, and steps in to steal a kiss. Really, Adasse has no one to blame but himself, the opening was right there, and how could Sorrel not take it? He smirks his triumph at the joke and joy of it all.

"Not that I ever mind taking lessons from you, mind. But you did ask."

Adasse let out a delighted chuckled, before he leans in and takes that kiss right back. He smoothed back Sorrel's hair back, smiling warmly.

"I did, I did, walked right into this. Good thing it's where I want to be." He beamed again.

"Ha," Sorrel grins, leaning forward into Adasse's arms with a comfortable ease. For just that brief time, it's like a dance, touch and balance, swaying one into the other, and his grin loses the sharpness around its edges, grows softer, easier, "I love you, so much."

And it seems, momentarily, as if it'll turn into another kiss, but Sorrel remembers himself only a moment too early, and breathes a sigh instead. Another time.

"So, will you teach me something... thiefy? If that's the word for it."

"You know I'll teach you anything thiefy you want to learn - which is not a word by the by." He smirked again, holding Sorrel loosely. "However, you haven't told me what you want to learn."

A thoughtful pause, "You've got the hands for it - you could probably use a set of picks."

"Thiefy is so a word. It means things that are to do with thiefing," Witness the high and snooty tone of Prince Sorrel of the Elven People. Hear his proclamation from on high, leaning into the Dalish accent all the while, "Picks?"

He thinks for a moment, then decides he likes the idea of learning the lockpick's trade. Ropes could be burned through, but shackles? It would be worth the while to imagine he could get himself out of danger, if it came to that.

"I think I'd like that."

"Yes, usually we just call that 'thievery' my love." Adasse grinned at the snootiness of his Prince, and laughed as he said, "Picks?"

He leaned out, and spun Sorrel around, as if they were dancing.

"Very good! We'll start you off with a basic single tumbler lock." He kissed one of Sorrel's hands, and then clasped it so he could pull the man over to the waiting line of chests.

"Thiefing is better," This is his hill and he's going to die on it; even if the look on his face says he knows damn well that he's wrong, and is going to be a brat about it, "It's probably fancier."

All this kissing and my-love-ing is hardly good incentive to decent behavior, after all. But he laughs right along and goes willingly, pirouette and all.

"Alright, single-tumbler lock, whatever that means. So then?"

"Sounds like I'm playing some sort of musical instrument with two different bits." Adasse teased, as he drew his lover with him. He knelt in front of the first and easiest chest, gesturing for Sorrel to join him while he took out his lockpicking kit.

"First, you have to find the right pick for the job. The simpler the lock the simpler the pick."

"Is this the wrong time to mention that my instrument has only the one bit to play?" He says, and only when the words are out does he spend any thought on the subject, "...Sorry. Sorry."

He could die now, that's fine, at least it would let him escape this foot he's put into his mouth. Focus, Sorrel!

"Right, right. Sorry," Watching Adasse for approval, he carefully selected what seemed like the least elaborate of the picks. Well it's the least wiggly-shaped, anyhow, "This one?"

"Your particular bit might only have one part to play, but honestly there's lots of games to play with it." Said Adasse. With absolutely no innocence what so ever. You walked right into a straight on Adasse heated smirk, Sorrel. You only have yourself to blame.

However, he shifted back to teacher mode, soon enough, showing him how the wiggly shaped one would fit the lock. The next hour was spent showing Sorrel how to feel out tumblers, just to see how they felt with one's fingertips around a pick.

"Not bad, love. We'll make you a decent thief yet."

Sorrel cannot long gaze directly into the light of a patented Adasse heated smirk. He'll melt. Case in point, he spends a fair portion of the beginning of the lockpicking lesson with pink ears and a distracted air. But once he focuses, Sorrel gains traction.

Though by the end, he's shaking his hand out in relief of the tension.

"Oh good, I'll teach you fireballs then, and you can be a decent mage," He laughs, "In case we have to trade places for a day, yeah?"

Adasse snorted softly at that, folding his legs so he could sit cross-legged on the ground. Comfortable and loose.

"Yeah pretty sure fireballs need more than a charming grin and some can-do attitude, love."

"Ugh, don't remind me," Sorrel groans, flopping down so that he can sprawl his legs, and lean into Adasse's shoulder, "Sleeping in the Gallows stinks, it's like every mage who ever lived there dumped a midden directly into the Fade, and then shat in it. It's no wonder there're so many blood mages in all the stories about Kirkwall."

He's exaggerating, really. But not by much— that many miserable people, living in close quarters, for that long. Unable to leave. Unable to breathe free or feel safe. Even before the mages, the Gallows had housed slaves... as mutable as the Fade was, it still took on memories, and scars.

Sorrel lets himself slide, then, until he's laying across Adasse's lap.

"...Do you ever have nightmares?"

Edited 2018-07-26 04:17 (UTC)

"...Now there's an image I never thought I would have about the Fade." Adasse let out a snicker, as his hand went into Sorrel's hair. "People going about shitting horrible feelings into the Fade. Delightful picture there, love."

His fingers tease through auburn strands, as his gaze becomes more pensive. "Of course I do. More than I'd like to say."

Sorrel, eyes closed, breathes a slow and comfortable sigh under Adasse's hand. It feels good, soothing. In the clan, there's so much touching: children with their hands, and bodies piled to sleep, knees pressed against one another in a blind, or around the campfire. In Kirkwall, people never seemed to touch one another, unless it was to hurt.

Like this, soft hand, warm fingertips on his scalp, it's like a salve, a blessing. A corner of home.

"Will you tell me?" He says, and opens his eyes, "You— I won't tell anyone, ever. You have mine, in trade."

Adasse's fingers paused in Sorrel's scalp, for just a moment. A considering moment, where he thought of simply doing what he usually did. Deflect, charm, seduce. Change the subject so he would not have to face the well of pain that came up with the thought.

That was followed by a sigh. He was tying his life to Sorrel's. He could not ... push this away because he could not face his fears properly. So when he spoke, he was not surprised his voice cracked.

"Usually ... it's watching my parents die again. I was born in Fereldan, you know. South Reach. It was overrun during the Fifth Blight. My parents smuggled me aboard a fleeing wagon of humans, right before the darkspawn descended. I ... watched as they dragged my mother off and tore my father apart. My mother fought them and they went from breaking her to killing her in a rage."

His fingers card a little in Sorrel's hair, "Sometimes, it's the human who tried to rape me, when I was ten. Tied me down, whipped me, ripped my clothes off ... except this time in the dream I don't have the nail I used to plunge into his throat. I'm helpless." He shuddered at the memory, that horrible feeling of being paralyzed. Not being able to decide his own fate.

"There are others, but those are the two that wake me up screaming."

Sorrel feels, more and more with every word, a guilt that rises up until he must choke on it, and die. It is acid in his mouth, caustic burn, old and familiar, strange that it should have been gone so long. He doesn't want to know this about Adasse, not because he doesn't want to know, but because he doesn't want it to be the truth.

"I'm here," He says, through the fist his throat is making, "I wish... I wish I knew anything that could help. I guess I'm kind of an ass for mostly just being worried about my— the Keeper."

Worry did not begin to touch Sorrel's feelings about Deheune Ashara, but of all the silence that lived in her shadow, none of it was the finality of death. There were no echoed screams in that darkness. There was nothing like what Adasse had seen. He had no right, no right to think of it as pain, and even less right to complain, Mythal bless him.

"I'm sorry."

Adasse shook his head, giving Sorrel's hair a tug so the other man would look up at him. "Hey, your worries and nightmares are just as legitimate as mine. I can't even imagine what you had to endure, being a Dalish mage, and one who was training to be a Keeper. We all have our own pasts to pull along behind us, Sorrel."

He smiled a little sadly, "Thank you though, for your sympathy. I ... I haven't told anyone any of this, outside of Herian. You are the only person I would trust with this, you know. I guess it's because ... because I know you'll still love me, scars and all. Just as I love you."

"But it was nothing like all that," He protests, seemingly without guile for the scar bisecting his cheek. Sorrel reaches up to touch Adasse's cheek, as if he could somehow... somehow protect him, "I..."

I want to protect you, he thought, but couldn't voice it, because it was nonsensical. How could he protect Adasse, who was so tough and worldly and who had survived so much? It certainly wasn't as if he could somehow reach back in time to protect the boy he had been. He was powerless. There was nothing to be done, except to hold fast, and endure.

"Of course I'll love you, just as you are. I only wish I could fix something. Make any of it right."

Adasse could see it in Sorrel's eyes, that almost desperate need to protect Adasse from any future harm. Maker only knew he had looked that way at Sorrel enough. So he leaned in to kiss the top of Sorrel's head again. "We suffered, and now we can hold onto each other to help close the wounds. That's ... that's more than I ever could have hoped for.

He never thought he would have anything like this - that he would ever feel this way about one man before. Sorrel changed everything about him for the best.

Sorrel hummed a noncommittal agreement, though not as if he weren't just as happy to fulfill Adasse's hopes, painful as they were in their meagerness. It wasn't enough, didn't feel like enough. He didn't want to just survive, he wanted to live.

"Ask me something," Sudden inspiration, under the softness of Adasse's eyes, "Anything. I always want to know everything about you, and... You should ask me something."

Because if it couldn't be fair, then at least it could be even.

Adasse blinked at that question, then looked at Sorrel for a long moment. Ah, so this was about making it even. Well, if he had to, he supposed he could oblige.

"So, before you and I got together, just how long were you in love with Cyril?" He tipped his head curiously, because Cyril was Cyril and they all fell in love with him, but with him and Sorrel? It was different.

He felt, with no way to stop the indignity of the expression, his face flame with a blush and the widening of his own eyes. Sorrel was, perhaps, expecting some horrible, gut-twisting, emotionally fraught question, about family or scars or lost things. Somehow, though he would not have been able to explain exactly how, this was worse. It was, in fact, much worse.

"Oh noooooo, not that. Ask something else," He moaned, putting both hands over his face. Adasse was naturally not going to ask anything else, of course he'd ask about Cyril.

And naturally that reaction had handily given him away.

"I don't know!" He said, finally, skating the edge of embarrassment and exasperation, "Forever? He always seemed so... you know! Flawless! And he could do whatever he wanted, even if it was crazy, or worse: against the rules! And nobody ever stopped him! I always thought he'd never, ever want someone like me, so I just sat on it, and it wasn't as if the Keeper was ever going to let me have anything like that, anyways."

He gestures impatiently with wild, talkative hands, as if to conscribe the whole of whatever 'that' was. Happiness, maybe. Or freedom. Or just to be with another man, instead of marrying a nice Dalish girl and settling down to make babies.

"And anyways, everything is so different now and... I don't know! Why are you asking me that?"

Adasse shrugged sheepishly, before he stroked his hand over Sorrel's cheek. There's no condemnation there, just a sense of peace. Something fit into place finally in the mystery that is Sorrel. "Honestly, because I know that it's not your hurts that make you, Sorrel. It's who you love. Who you have let into your life, who made an impact on your heart. Cyril. Beleth. Your mother. Me."

A wry little smile, "Whatever suffering you have been through, love has always seen you through."

"Alright, first of all, you go on the other side of that list, not the end with the Keeper in it," Sorrel replies, quite serious under his joking outrage, "Secondly, you..."

He really wants to shove Adasse, make a joke of it, somehow. Escape from under the lamplight of his scrutiny. It's a kneejerk reaction, learned reflex from a lifetime of assumed unworth. The impulse crests early and washes away behind him, leaving behind something new and fragile and uncertain. Like a newborn Halla on wobbly legs, pale and trembling, but gaining confidence with every step.

"...Y'big... sap."

It's weak, and his heart isn't in it. The insult is hardly worth calling out for the clear endearment it really is.

"'Dasse, can I ask you something? It's kind of big."

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[Open] Thief Knows Thief

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