Fade Rift Mods (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
faderifting) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
faderift2019-05-15 11:04 am
faderifting) wrote in faderift2019-05-15 11:04 am
Entry tags:
- ! open,
- alexandrie d'asgard,
- bastien,
- benedict quintus artemaeus,
- darras rivain,
- isaac,
- julius,
- kostos averesch,
- matthias,
- nell voss,
- wysteria de foncé,
- yseult,
- { anders },
- { athessa },
- { charles vane },
- { ilias fabria },
- { kenna carrow },
- { lakshmi bai },
- { leander },
- { magni an forleif o talonhold },
- { thor }
EVENT: TRUTH BOMB
WHO: Anyone
WHAT: TRUTH BOMB
WHEN: Bloomingtide 15-17
WHERE: The Gallows
NOTES: OOC information. Use appropriate content warnings in your subject lines, please.
WHAT: TRUTH BOMB
WHEN: Bloomingtide 15-17
WHERE: The Gallows
NOTES: OOC information. Use appropriate content warnings in your subject lines, please.
It’s an ordinary day—so not a very pleasant one. The weather is dreary and muggy, and the day’s lunch is a soup that’s a little too watery and bland. The griffons are being their usual level of noisy and swoopy. The work is its usual level of urgent and difficult.
But in the storage rooms, something wiggles. Then it hums. Then it pops.
Outside of the storage room, there’s no actual sound, no shift in the wind, and no visible sign of a change. But the pop might be felt—like the moment something finally clicks, or two ideas suddenly fit together, except the opposite. In the heads of everyone in the fortress, something is suddenly not connected quite right.
The first sign of what’s gone wrong is that someone immediately stands up and tells the cook how bad the soup is.
A lot of people’s days are about to get exponentially worse.
But in the storage rooms, something wiggles. Then it hums. Then it pops.
Outside of the storage room, there’s no actual sound, no shift in the wind, and no visible sign of a change. But the pop might be felt—like the moment something finally clicks, or two ideas suddenly fit together, except the opposite. In the heads of everyone in the fortress, something is suddenly not connected quite right.
The first sign of what’s gone wrong is that someone immediately stands up and tells the cook how bad the soup is.
A lot of people’s days are about to get exponentially worse.
ilias | middling
leander;
His usual polite distance, the measured and curated space he has been so careful to maintain between himself and Leander thusfar, is crossed in a series of swift steps, the extension of a hand as if to touch an elbow — not to grab, but to curl arm and shoulder near enough that a hissed whisper need not carry down from between them to the whole damn courtyard.
And to turn palm up. ]
Your sending crystal. Please.
no subject
[Leander plainly heard what he said, even angled himself to receive it so both their faces, especially, are hidden from any of the eyes below. Just the same as so many other unfortunate expressions today, his indignation is honest, but it comes with a whiff of amusement, at least. (And a soft prickling up the back of his neck, thrilled to stand so close.)
The man himself comes with a whiff of fragrant smoke, the cigarillo light between his fingers. His other hand closes around the stone.]
no subject
If you are at risk of saying anything that might require you to do anyone harm, I would have your crystal.
[ Palm still open, expectant. ]
no subject
[If any phrase can at once be condescending and completely genuine, it must be this one, from this mouth. The tilt of his head, the softening eyes—the particular way his own lips briefly press, and curl, like there are fangs behind them.]
You still think you're my keeper, don't you?
[He hedges visually, looks like he might say something else. With obvious effort, he does not. The pressure to share what he knows did not begin today, but fuck if today hasn't made it extreme. It feels to him like a struggle against something inevitable. But he's beaten death itself—by the power of his own will, he believes—and what is this compared to that?]
no subject
Yes, clearly, that is the face of a person who has everything under control. ]
For as long as I permit you to continue on here, with these people whose trust you might earn, and-- [ And. A glance is cast quick over one shoulder, checking yet again they are within no one's earshot, before his head ducks nearer still, fear sharpening his caution-- ] And speak not a word of the things I know of you, yes. It is my responsibility too, what comes of that.
no subject
I don't need your permission to live.
[Nor does he need to throw worried looks to feel comfortable, confident that any consequences lie within his power to navigate—but then, it's always been that way.
The space between them leans wider once more, casual, Leander's head turning to receive one last fragrant lungful, and just like that, he deposits the crystal in Ilias's hand before he's done. It's as if he's meant to hold it just temporarily while Lea licks his own finger and thumb and takes his time pinching at the cigarillo's lit end until it stops smouldering.]
I've been good, haven't I?
no subject
I know you are trying.
[ It's not soft, but softening. It also isn't an answer. Perhaps Leander has been well behaved, or perhaps he's been well-behaved where Ilias can see him — perhaps Ilias doesn't want to measure his life in those terms at all. His fingers close around the crystal, an uncomfortable victory, eating at him as surely as the words he's still biting back. ]
You must know— [ slipping now, from between his teeth, ] It is not only them I want to protect.
no subject
[They know so much about each other, intuitively; in other ways, very little. It's a gap Leander is greedy to fill, but neither of them will learn anything by stuffing one another into their mouths like animals. Better that they feed each other in pieces.
Still...
There's no one else out here, the distance between their bodies is negligible, and the air is thick with a curse—no one knows how or why or what, except that it's raked them all raw. So perhaps, when his hand selfishly crosses that distance to test the both of them, it can be forgiven.]
I want to tell you that you can't have it both ways, but you can. [Fingertips along his jaw, his neck, tracing the softness of his earlobe, the thumb so gentle at the corner of his mouth. So quiet.] You can ask me for anything, Ilias. Ask me and you can have it.
no subject
There are a lot of things he'd like to have both ways.
(What a curious, chasmic thing it is, to hear that potential spoken aloud and know there's no lie in it. He could have anything he wanted. Anything. This isn't the way he felt with his fingers wrapped around the hilt of a knife at his lover's breastbone; perhaps it is the way Leander did.) ]
Come with me, [ he says at last, a hand rising to cup over the other mage's, his eyes imploring no matter Leander's promises. ] Until this passes. We'll each keep to ourselves, and away from everyone who might come to harm.
no subject
[His thumb moves across the edge of Ilias's lower lip, just halfway, before the entire hand drags down to the base of his neck, the way it's done so many times before. Nestled there against collar and bone, the slightest curl of fingertips around muscle.]
It's perfect. [The decision makes itself: space is shrinking again, the scent of smoke on his breath, words ghosting dangerously close—] You're perfect. [—to touch only their foreheads together, not their lips. Noses brush, perhaps, if he's allowed to stay so long.
Whether or not Ilias draws back from him:] I'd follow you forever.
no subject
The fingers curling at his neck feel like slipping under. How many times has Leander spoken to him in these impossible absolutes? Promises no one but the Maker himself could keep, and it took so much blood to make Ilias finally begin to doubt them, but this — after everything they've done to each other, these words are as true now (truer) as every time they've been spoken, tucked away in their makeshift tents and locked rooms and the not-so-hidden alcoves where it had first occurred to Ilias he could want something only for himself. (Want and have.)
The movement is barely one at all. The inevitable rotation of the planes of a two frontal bones, the cresting of the ridge of one nose past another, air held in his lungs for a bare few degrees tilt of the chin
—balked from in the same motion, like swinging out over the abyss. Fuck. Breath looses in a barely-voiced curse; closed hand set to shoulder, as much to push himself back as Leander. Fuck fuck fuck. The recoil is worse than the lead-in, the opening of space a ragged pull of a bird in a snare. ]
That wasn't— [ but wasn't it, almost? ] I didn't mean— [ but didn't he? ]
no subject
Leander is moving, too, leaning back even before Ilias's hand reaches him, likewise dissuading his own impulses with a light and steady push. Even though the world beyond them had begun to shrink down to the soft tunnel vision of intimacy, of no time, of nothing but breath and pulse and anticipation—still, reluctantly, he takes his hand away. Gently, he clears his throat.]
I know. [An obvious pang behind his smile. (There's no perhaps in its transparency; not for him.)] I'm— [sorry. He isn't. It's what you say, what he tries to say, but.] I can't even blame the spell for it, can I.
[No, he can't. Neither of them can, any more than you can blame the smoke for burning down your house.
That same hand reconnects with Ilias, the lightest guiding touch at the small of his back, and Lea turns to stand more alongside him. Softly,]
Here—let's go inside. You can tell me about him on the way.
isaac (+/- leander);
Run out of cigarettes is, apparently, the first answer. Said pair of sending crystals hang from the latch of an open window, out of reach; firmly within reach, Ilias has emptied from his pockets a striker and a cigarette case, a neat little pile of ash soon to to take up residence in the latter's lid. He should have brought a book. Paper and ink. More cigarettes, at least.
Should have considered, perhaps, what he planned to do when the footfalls in the stairwell inevitably came to a stop on this floor. Instead, the sound freezes him in place, pinched fingers at his lips, mid much-needed drag, his eyes sliding to land on its source. ]
Fuck.
[ — is blessedly at least half muffled by smoke coughing its way out of his lungs again. ]
no subject
His tongue twists itself into a grimace. Can't help a glance down the hall (a quick exit would be prudent for everyone) before he turns instead, to settle on the floor beside Ilias. So they're trying this, then. ]
This isn't my door,
[ Is out of his mouth before he can remember to fight it. Isaac knows exactly whose door it is — there aren't any others — but enough of that who yet a mystery. It isn't as though he's an idiot (at least one), but if he presses his paranoia, even it will concede there are reasons enough for Ilias to block a door.
Maybe that should, itself, be troubling.
His head tips aside, hand lifted expectant to the cigarette: share. Doesn't look happy, but who does? ]
Is he listening?
[ Considers turning to knock. ]
no subject
He watches Isaac approach a little the way one might the hoisting of the guillotine, a flick of the eye noting the sharpness. ]
I tend to assume yes, as a rule.
[ Not only now. Not only today. This isn't how he planned to discuss any of this — but if he's honest with himself, too, he'd mostly planned how to avoid needing to. Ask and I will answer, offered with a measure of control over which questions might arise at all.
Control that's rapidly slipping out of his grasp. He passes the cigarette over with a deal more ease. ]
I would like to tell you this isn't what it looks like, but it is probably worse. [ —is what comes out, in place of reassurance. ]
no subject
[ Trapping him in a room, etcetera.
Smoking doesn't stop his mouth from working, but it's something to snarl the words; prevent undue spill. Awkward, the contortion of a lip. More still, to drag it free (hand back that paper baton). ]
Who else shouldn't he be talking to?
no subject
Everyone.
[ Too honest. He's clenching his jaw against the rest of an answer as soon as that's past his lips. How many sorts of secrets are there, that he can't imagine a single person in this fortress taking in stride?
(That he can't imagine Leander trusting a single living soul to keep. If the wrong word slips out—) ]
You're simply the one I want him to talk to least.
hello darling
Ilias' warning to her still sits on her shoulders, leaving her concerned and confused. What does it mean? Why should she stay away from someone she is growing fond of? What right does he have to demand anything of her, especially with the treatment he has offered her in the past? She had imagined some of their bridges being mended, but perhaps the fire is still ablaze... Even if she might admit that some of the blame might lie at her own feet, now.
Perhaps, if she was being completely honest with herself. Perhaps.
Sidony doesn't mean to seek him out, but her feet take her to him all the same, hovering nearby before she shakes her head and walks up to stand at his side, arms crossed behind her back. She feels very small beside him, very sour, angry at his treatment of her, of his power, of what he had achieved once she had been dismissed from his teaching. She could be sour about that for lifetimes, she thinks; she was undeserving of such a dismissal, with no clue to what sin she had committed.
She sighs. ]
How are you feeling, Ilias?