faderift | gather jewels from graveyards

"The statues didn't improve it." Or so he's heard. Isaac doesn't look up quite yet, carefully working at the joint where wings hide. It's magic, of course, the garden — and Leander's a stranger. Isaac isn't hiding here (too bad at it), but he isn't any more inclined to give up the edge in a conversation. Bad enough that the beetle's such a pretty little thing. "Or the jutting spikes, I suppose."

He is, for a moment, quite preoccupied. Thirty-odd years since he stopped stabling the things in boxes, but the habit's never precisely vanished.

Neither have his manners. His glance up is half apology; it isn't as though he started it, so half's precisely where it stays.

"What caught your eye?"

Passes the little corpse back.

Edited 2019-01-06 05:34 (UTC)

"The iridescence." Palm up to accept; this time he's less careful. "And the man on the bench," he adds, with a brief and flirtatious cant of his head. "On the way down here, I was prepared to be extremely polite. Imagine my luck."

And away skips his gaze again, to find something or other to ponder over yonder. It finds the gnarled shape of a tree and lingers there among its wet-black branches in genuine, if heavy-lidded, interest. His chin lifts; he breathes deeply, in through the nose and out again between his lips. The little corpse turns lightly between his fingers like a fidgeting coin.

Suddenly inspired, he reaches into the folds of his clothing, where a breast pocket would be. And is. Somewhere in there.

What a fucking weirdo.

— Which tracks, really, when has anyone to spare him a glance not been. The eyes aren’t bad (wet branches), the wrists (gnarled); he’s human, he thinks of it.

A stranger's groping about his chest in public, of course he thinks of it.

But Isaac can follow a glance well as any. And this is public. And he’s still holding a beetle, palmed between thumb and finger so lightly that any moment might threaten to crush black.

"That one will bloom, come spring."

The tree — the beetle, too; if left long enough, to the right devices. Rot finds a way.

If Leander knew he'd already hit notes of both charming and weirdo during this exchange, he might be proud of it. He's not rummaging around in there to put on a show, however—a bit lower, perhaps, turning his head to look with a little frown between his eyebrows, not quite as smooth as he'd have liked—but to retrieve a leather pouch, about the size of a deck of cards. In goes the beetle's fragile little body for safe keeping, out comes a slim cylinder of leaf, smooth and dark, wrapped tightly by hand.

"Oh? That ought to be lovely. Something to look forward to." The cigarette tips toward Isaac, offering and appeal combined. "Hope you don't mind." Whether or not he accepts, "I'd heard of those statues—it's too bad they were all removed. I was looking forward to seeing them. Are there any left?"

If Isaac were the suspicious type, this would trip every signal. A chance meeting; the insect, the smoke. May as well check off a list of curious trouble. Praise the Maker that he isn't suspicious. Not enough that he'll not first see this path around a corner or two —

"Melted down," A nod (what passes for gratitude), slips the cigarette between his fingers to roll against knuckle. Deliberates, "Before my time."

But people talk. Satisfied, he presses it up between teeth, cups the end in hands that haven't reached for a light. The pinch of Leander's brow is bizarre reassurance: So much for that conversation's edge.

A spark between his fingers, paper flares into ash. Isaac observes, steady over the top an inhale, and tries to imagine who'd earnestly want that bit of Imperial wreckage. Screaming slaves. Picturesque.

"I heard they saved a sculpture," Relief is the word he's looking for, chooses not to find. "But I couldn't tell you where. The archives might know."

If Gareth wouldn't just take his staff to the fucking thing. He offers the cigarette back.

Edited 2019-01-16 16:12 (UTC)

Leander, meanwhile, is counting items on a list of a different sort entirely, and the unexpected surprise of a shared cigarette is among them. He was going to tap out one of his own, but forget about that. And that reveal when Isaac lights it, so casually—if there were no spark of magic to reflect in the shine of Leander's eyes, there'd have been a spark in them regardless.
That's on his list, too, very near the top.

"I'll have to ask after it, then." Fingers crossed for screaming slaves. "Nice bit of history."

A pause, here, as he draws his own mouthful, without attempting anything stylish. (The pocket thing threw him off a bit.) Ever so courteously, he blows the smoke away from Isaac. Doesn't immediately pass it back. Does decide to see how long he can hold eye contact before one of them gives in to the typically human urge to smile—properly, not like the almost thing his mouth is so often doing—or to look away.

Imagine the coincidence panic it might cause if either of them were aware of Leander's future in Research; he'll be assigned to artifact restoration roughly a day from now. (And if he does manage to track down that relief, he'll casually correct him about the terminology later.)

Isaac’s chin tips back, curious — what exactly is he doing — before his eyebrows sketch up in a smile of a different sort.

(A smile, the same.)

"Nice bit of present." The implication of a future crawling steadily closer. There was a time in his life when he might have named the nearest alcove; the Gallows decidedly aren’t it. Even so, "What was it you came here to do?"

"I can't remember." It's only halfway a joke. If he had something in mind for this meeting, any specific reason to connect with a stranger based on just a few words exchanged, it wasn't this. (His objection to the crystals, though, that part's true.) "Mustn't have been important."

Leander probably, almost certainly, definitely doesn't need to lean quite so close to Isaac to return the cigarette. They both have arms capable of extending, proven only moments ago. And yet.

A curious frown bunches between his eyebrows—not a bad one. The ghost of a smile still lingers below. "Is that you or the garden? That planty scent."

Planty, herbal, some other adult-sounding word. Oh well. His bare chin's already dug that hole, might as well hop into it.

Planty. That startles a laugh, a cough about smoke. Isaac plucks the cigarette from between his lips; doesn’t lean away to tap it toward grass.

"Dreadful, isn’t it." Overdone, maybe; particularly this close. The air’s cold, breath’s warmer. "But it’s this or the Infirmary."

Soap can’t always ease the stain of blood and bowels. Or worse (more frequent), cats.

The Infirmary, is it—that's interesting. Intriguing, even. It's also a line of thought that forks dramatically away from this pleasant path they've come to wander, and while he does enjoy a good blood and bowel story as much as the next charming weirdo, now is perhaps not the time. But since he laughed—

"I don't mind it." Now is, perhaps, the time to slip his finger under a hem, somewhere not too familiar (the front of a shoulder, or a center button line) and trail it along to sample the texture of Isaac's outermost layer. "Moths, though—they must find you very intimidating."

Sampling over, and nary a moth-hole was discovered. His reward: a few light victory pats and the cheekiest look.

"As they ought." His voice lilts clownish, self-aware: "Daresay I could pin a flighty thing."

It's not cheap stitching (his shoulder, the sleeve); it clearly isn't new. Dark to hide stains, thick to hide a shiver — to allow his attention to track that line of contact with more languid affect. But if that's the game they're playing,

Isaac leans back. Blithely, disentangled:

"Of course, it's never moths by daylight."

In the arcane language of eyebrows: You could, eh? Leander turns in his seat, hooks his elbow over the back of the bench and laces his fingers together between the two of them. Thusly prepared, he lifts his chin just so, doesn't quite look down his (slightly crooked) nose.

"What, then? If not a moth. Tell me."

Go on. Tell him what he is.

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