faderift | [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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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."

[Open] Thief Knows Thief

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