WHO: Nikos & Kostos WHAT: Two bros admitting they care, five feet apart because they're not fucking babies. WHEN: Sometime earlier in Bloomingtide. WHERE: Antiva. NOTES: Other stuff might get stuck in here too.
[ Two. Two. Kostos cuts a flat look sideways to make sure that fact is properly emphasized, while the two guards in question shift restlessly at their posts.
Beyond them is the summer home of Giovanni Durante, looking not half as foreboding as Nikos' grumbling on the way here had made him imagine it would be. There are flowers in the windows. And inside, somewhere, is necklace that's apparently their ticket to cheap food shipments for the foreseeable future.
(Inside is also a lethal-trap enthusiast and all-around shady asshole who doesn't worry about guarding his front door too heavily because most people know better than to try.)
Outside, hidden by the dark and a garden wall, Kostos crouches to tighten the straps on his boots. ]
[Nikos snaps out this retort without even the slightest hesitation or any real thought. There is something about his brother that dulls and sharpens his wit in alternation, like a knife dragged across rough stone before it is immediately drawn over a whetstone. It comes of constantly striving for the upper hand, probably. Looking for weaknesses and keeping your feet while you do it.
Though speaking of knives: he's got his. Four of the best ones, two of those the fine Antivan make, the other two more obscure in their origins. One small mediocre knife, a last resort to keep on hand. Their weight is a small comfort, confirmation that he is prepared for what might come next. He has to be prepared. It's going to be unholy chaos.
He breaks off in glaring at the palatial estate laid out before them so he can glare at his fucking brother instead, which is like glaring at himself, only he cannot possibly ever look this insufferable. He probably does look this insufferable, regularly. Beyond them, Durante's home is all cool green grounds and gardens, water features, smooth walls of pale sunbaked sandstone, pleasant arched windows, tiled porticoes, all of it a mask, drawn over the pulsating corruption and rot and wealth--
Yes, he's afraid. Apprehensive, not fearful. And not for his own life--though that being said, if he gets killed because he came here with Kostos--who he doesn't even like--]
Did I warn you, about the guards? No. I warned you about Durante. Your target. Who is fucked. If you're determined to ignore me, fine, but if you get me killed, [if you get killed] because of your smugness, I'll come back as a spirit and pop your eyeballs out of your head with my thumbs.
[ Spirits. It might be how eyeballs work, with sufficient thumb force—that's less his area. He'll defer to Nikos' eye-popping expertise, if only because he can do so without acknowledging out loud that he is.
Boots successfully tightened, he straightens up and gives Nikos a look that might have been friendly, almost, if not for the context. It's not exactly unfriendly, anyway. His enjoyment of the situation, of the challenge, of being here instead of in an office trying desperately to pretend to be the sort of person well-suited to spending hours reading reports and doing paperwork, has almost nothing to do with appreciation of Nikos' apprehension. ]
And I will not get you killed. [ Especially since that ring means he gets at least one do-over. ] You can't possibly be more difficult to keep alive than Nell.
Yes, but you actually give a shit about Nell. Makes a difference in the level of effort exuded.
[Nikos has glanced away from Kostos for most of the duration of that look, his attention caught again by the estate. He's looking for tells, for anything that might suggest a clear and present danger to bee avoided or forestalled or killed, quickly, and easily. Eyeball popping, throat cutting, chest stabbing, whatever it takes.
When he finds nothing, he's forced to look back at his brother, whose near-friendliness is contrasted by that present smugness, like a particolored cloak.
There was a book whose binding Nikos had worn out reading, after Keto was dead and Kostos was gone. Him, who hated books. Fucking nothing else to do, and they kept trying to keep him indoors at first. A young prince kept the counsel of his shadow. The shadow was a little wicked and a little cruel and a great deal mischievous, but always helpful to the prince by the end of the story.
His stupid traitorous heart is what has put him here. Leaped at the chance. Now he glares at Kostos, and it's unclear which of them is the prince and which of them is the shadow, and what fucking sentimentality is it that makes him think in those terms, and how can he cut it out of himself the way that Kostos seems to have done. Neatly, easily, without looking back.
He gestures, with great exaggeration, toward the estate. There's a kind of friendliness to it as well. Brother stuff.]
Lead on, arsehead. Or should I go in ahead of you and kill the guards first? I hear you're better in support than in action.
[ Kostos rolls his eyes, which gives his face a nice break from the tight-reined neutrality that followed you actually give a shit about Nell—the urges to insist he gives a shit about Nikos and to agree he doesn't so evenly matched that they cancel each other out entirely—and remained in place for kill the guards. ]
I am.
[ And he's not sorry. But: ]
Will it bother you— [ the one situation where he gives a shit about bothering someone ] —if I cast? On you.
[ He has before, without asking. Twice. Recently, when Nikos was already falling and he didn’t know what he was falling into, and then that other time, which has disappeared into blankness that's sandwiched by the buzz of beetle wings and the realization he must been screaming, because of how cavernous the quiet was when a hand cracked across his face and he suddenly stopped.
This time would ideally be more like the former.
Still.
Summoning wisps is second nature by now, and the attention he gives the intricate twist of his hands isn't really necessary, except that it gives him something to look at with an air of nonchalance that's at complete odds with the fact that he keeps running his mouth out of something that might, theoretically, be nerves. ]
[The twist of emotion is deep in Nikos' chest, a momentary animalish feeling. Childish, ugly, complicated, a jolt of instinct. He remembers a lot. He remembers being fucking thrilled and proud, or something like pride, this deep deep feeling when he could point to a beetle in the and say there, and watch Kostos fry it like it was nothing. Holding Keto around the shoulders, her back to his chest, and she would put her mouth against his arm, make a squealing sound that was as delighted as it was fearful. Punishment, was the game. They were grim overlords and Kostos was the executioner. But he doesn't remember the day, or that game, in particular; it was one in many. And then he was in bed and the curtains were closed and everything was different.
He feels no urge to scratch at his arm, gnarled scar tissue. He doesn't even think of it. He looks over at Kostos, who is looking at his hands.]
You won't give me shit. [Yeah okay is very much the tone.] Now I want to say yes just to see you struggle with that resolution.
[Unwittingly, he pulls himself up to stand taller. Coming around to this resolution of his own:]
Do it. If it's going to make this shit easier. And then let's get on with it. I prefer action. Apparently that's a difference between us, Support.
[ There's no time for relief to settle in before the irritation that follows, and that's for the best. He wouldn't know what to say, other than something stupid, maybe something that would be sharper than Support, which he accepts with a mouth twitch that hints at smugness, himself again, no longer staring at his hands. People can give him all the shit they want. He's the difference between formidability and invincibility, and he knows it, and everyone else can appreciate that or not. As long as it works. ]
After you.
[ He'll be right behind—less right behind than the wisps, their light dimmed to a faint glow, weaving behind Nikos like ethereal little kites when he moves over the garden wall and toward the house. They're last resorts. Three last resorts. First resort is a barrier of Kostos' own conjuring, as soon as one of guards notices they're about to die and one to cry out in alarm, and an injection of magic like a jolt of adrenaline, head-clearing and reaction-heightening.
He's not going to get Nikos killed.
But in the house, some of the windows that were dark begin to illuminate. More windows than he'd like. It might take work. ]
[This is what Nikos is good at. Moving, quickly; striking quicker. The distance between himself and the guards is closed, quick, illuminated from behind by the unearthly glow of Kostos' wisps.
When Kostos' magic lights up in his nerves and veins, he moves faster, smoother. It's a good feeling. The opposite of the ambient dull that normally suffuses his system. The guards are facing one another, chatting across the space that divides them--the further one sees Nikos first, calls out that warning--but it's too late, Nikos grabs the man high around the shoulders, crushes him close in a backwards embrace, and lays open his throat.
The man chokes, and there's no struggle. His knees turn to water, he goes down, and Nikos with him--crouched, grabbing for his second knife as the other guard starts a run at him, all foolish and headlong. The blade whips through the air, smooth, strikes him in the forehead, and then he's down, too, and the last sound is the gurgle of the dying man.
Nikos wipes his blade on the man's sleeve, and goes to fetch the other one. The wisps hover behind him, following along--two close, one at a distance, maybe waiting for its master. Kostos is there, coming on the scene. Nikos confirms that with a glance out of his periphery, clocking him and then moving on.
He does wait until his brother is near enough to compliment him--]
See why people keep you around.
[--in an undertone. He's not yet seen the lights in the house. He's busy crouching over the dead guard, his foot braced on the man's shoulder to give him leverage enough to yank free the knife from his head. It comes out with a sick slick sound, and he gets to wiping it down, too.]
[ He should return the compliment. It was good work, neat and quick, and would still have been good work without his help. But his attention is partly on the house, partly on the dark seep of blood from the cut throat of the man on the ground and the wet sound of the thrown knife’s extraction, and by the time he’s blinked the hollowness out of his eyes the moment has passed in silence and there’s no getting it back. ]
They’re coming down.
[ He’s too close to the house now to see the all of the second-floor windows, but one of the wisps isn’t, drifting up above their heads, so he knows. The fires from bedside lanterns and stoked fires have turned into fires in the hallway braziers, glowing dim and static, and someone inside calls a name from a distance that could stand to be longer. Gabriele. The cut throat or the punctured forehead?
Kostos draws two more wisps across the Veil and jerks his head toward the upper window. There’s no going up the stairs, now, and the best information they have says it’s up there, on display beneath a portrait. ]
But that's not reasonable. And Nikos isn't psychopathic. He enjoys his work for the cause; he enjoys swift justice, clearing the way for change. He doesn't get off on it. Or not exactly, anyways. It's complicated, and nothing he'd put into word, and also not any of Kostos' business, or any of his interest.
So. Nikos gives one last wipe of his knife against the dead guard's tunic and flips it around again, shoves it back to his belt. He's less assured when he looks to the window, but the tell of that uncertainty is a small thing, and probably nothing Kostos--over half their lives a stranger--could read besides.]
Can you make the window? [Neither a yes or a no. The voice from inside repeats the name again, Gabriele, demands a report. Not time to fuck around.] Either give me a boost or get up there and give me a hand up.
[ Maybe he could make it. In less dire circumstances he'd try it just to try to prove he could, then sit on the edge and be smug about it for a while if Nikos couldn't follow him. But he's moving beneath the ledge and window in question instead, linking his hands to provide a step up, shaking his head. ]
I can keep them down here.
[ Strong barriers. A stream of wisps, short the several he's planning to send after Nikos to watch his back. When he puts his mind to it, it takes a lot of work for anyone to be able to touch him at all—assuming there are no other mages, no Templars, no magebane—
[Nikos grunts, first. Fine. But he has to register, for the record--]
If this is you being some noble fucking martyr--
[Don't. Grumbled, it sounds more like a complaint than any concern. And it is a complaint. But he's being dramatic, and Kostos is actually being helpful so, fine, yes--he puts one foot in Kostos' cupped hands, gets his fingertips on the edge of the windowsill--
It takes effort. He's not exactly built, except in the area of his gut. The wall-scrabbling is ungainly but minimal--and he steps at one point on Kostos' head, which he chooses to take as a kind of insult instead of a clumsy mistake--and eventually he gets an arm over the windowsill, and then he can haul himself up, properly, brace feet against the side of the wall and vault over.
Clumsy. But out of Kostos' view, and like the professional he fucking is, he shrinks against the wall and holds very still once he's gotten himself to rights. His hand on his knife, his eyes playing about the room. The unearthly light of his brother's wisps light up the room as they rise over the windowsill. Nikos glares at them. It's an appreciative glare.
No one is in the room. He shoves himself to his feet and moves toward the nearest piece of furniture: a desk.]
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no subject
[ Two. Two. Kostos cuts a flat look sideways to make sure that fact is properly emphasized, while the two guards in question shift restlessly at their posts.
Beyond them is the summer home of Giovanni Durante, looking not half as foreboding as Nikos' grumbling on the way here had made him imagine it would be. There are flowers in the windows. And inside, somewhere, is necklace that's apparently their ticket to cheap food shipments for the foreseeable future.
(Inside is also a lethal-trap enthusiast and all-around shady asshole who doesn't worry about guarding his front door too heavily because most people know better than to try.)
Outside, hidden by the dark and a garden wall, Kostos crouches to tighten the straps on his boots. ]
But if you're afraid—
no subject
[Nikos snaps out this retort without even the slightest hesitation or any real thought. There is something about his brother that dulls and sharpens his wit in alternation, like a knife dragged across rough stone before it is immediately drawn over a whetstone. It comes of constantly striving for the upper hand, probably. Looking for weaknesses and keeping your feet while you do it.
Though speaking of knives: he's got his. Four of the best ones, two of those the fine Antivan make, the other two more obscure in their origins. One small mediocre knife, a last resort to keep on hand. Their weight is a small comfort, confirmation that he is prepared for what might come next. He has to be prepared. It's going to be unholy chaos.
He breaks off in glaring at the palatial estate laid out before them so he can glare at his fucking brother instead, which is like glaring at himself, only he cannot possibly ever look this insufferable. He probably does look this insufferable, regularly. Beyond them, Durante's home is all cool green grounds and gardens, water features, smooth walls of pale sunbaked sandstone, pleasant arched windows, tiled porticoes, all of it a mask, drawn over the pulsating corruption and rot and wealth--
Yes, he's afraid. Apprehensive, not fearful. And not for his own life--though that being said, if he gets killed because he came here with Kostos--who he doesn't even like--]
Did I warn you, about the guards? No. I warned you about Durante. Your target. Who is fucked. If you're determined to ignore me, fine, but if you get me killed, [if you get killed] because of your smugness, I'll come back as a spirit and pop your eyeballs out of your head with my thumbs.
no subject
[ Spirits. It might be how eyeballs work, with sufficient thumb force—that's less his area. He'll defer to Nikos' eye-popping expertise, if only because he can do so without acknowledging out loud that he is.
Boots successfully tightened, he straightens up and gives Nikos a look that might have been friendly, almost, if not for the context. It's not exactly unfriendly, anyway. His enjoyment of the situation, of the challenge, of being here instead of in an office trying desperately to pretend to be the sort of person well-suited to spending hours reading reports and doing paperwork, has almost nothing to do with appreciation of Nikos' apprehension. ]
And I will not get you killed. [ Especially since that ring means he gets at least one do-over. ] You can't possibly be more difficult to keep alive than Nell.
no subject
[Nikos has glanced away from Kostos for most of the duration of that look, his attention caught again by the estate. He's looking for tells, for anything that might suggest a clear and present danger to bee avoided or forestalled or killed, quickly, and easily. Eyeball popping, throat cutting, chest stabbing, whatever it takes.
When he finds nothing, he's forced to look back at his brother, whose near-friendliness is contrasted by that present smugness, like a particolored cloak.
There was a book whose binding Nikos had worn out reading, after Keto was dead and Kostos was gone. Him, who hated books. Fucking nothing else to do, and they kept trying to keep him indoors at first. A young prince kept the counsel of his shadow. The shadow was a little wicked and a little cruel and a great deal mischievous, but always helpful to the prince by the end of the story.
His stupid traitorous heart is what has put him here. Leaped at the chance. Now he glares at Kostos, and it's unclear which of them is the prince and which of them is the shadow, and what fucking sentimentality is it that makes him think in those terms, and how can he cut it out of himself the way that Kostos seems to have done. Neatly, easily, without looking back.
He gestures, with great exaggeration, toward the estate. There's a kind of friendliness to it as well. Brother stuff.]
Lead on, arsehead. Or should I go in ahead of you and kill the guards first? I hear you're better in support than in action.
no subject
I am.
[ And he's not sorry. But: ]
Will it bother you— [ the one situation where he gives a shit about bothering someone ] —if I cast? On you.
[ He has before, without asking. Twice. Recently, when Nikos was already falling and he didn’t know what he was falling into, and then that other time, which has disappeared into blankness that's sandwiched by the buzz of beetle wings and the realization he must been screaming, because of how cavernous the quiet was when a hand cracked across his face and he suddenly stopped.
This time would ideally be more like the former.
Still.
Summoning wisps is second nature by now, and the attention he gives the intricate twist of his hands isn't really necessary, except that it gives him something to look at with an air of nonchalance that's at complete odds with the fact that he keeps running his mouth out of something that might, theoretically, be nerves. ]
I won't give you any shit if you say yes.
no subject
He feels no urge to scratch at his arm, gnarled scar tissue. He doesn't even think of it. He looks over at Kostos, who is looking at his hands.]
You won't give me shit. [Yeah okay is very much the tone.] Now I want to say yes just to see you struggle with that resolution.
[Unwittingly, he pulls himself up to stand taller. Coming around to this resolution of his own:]
Do it. If it's going to make this shit easier. And then let's get on with it. I prefer action. Apparently that's a difference between us, Support.
i cannot beLIEVE
After you.
[ He'll be right behind—less right behind than the wisps, their light dimmed to a faint glow, weaving behind Nikos like ethereal little kites when he moves over the garden wall and toward the house. They're last resorts. Three last resorts. First resort is a barrier of Kostos' own conjuring, as soon as one of guards notices they're about to die and one to cry out in alarm, and an injection of magic like a jolt of adrenaline, head-clearing and reaction-heightening.
He's not going to get Nikos killed.
But in the house, some of the windows that were dark begin to illuminate. More windows than he'd like. It might take work. ]
;) yw
When Kostos' magic lights up in his nerves and veins, he moves faster, smoother. It's a good feeling. The opposite of the ambient dull that normally suffuses his system. The guards are facing one another, chatting across the space that divides them--the further one sees Nikos first, calls out that warning--but it's too late, Nikos grabs the man high around the shoulders, crushes him close in a backwards embrace, and lays open his throat.
The man chokes, and there's no struggle. His knees turn to water, he goes down, and Nikos with him--crouched, grabbing for his second knife as the other guard starts a run at him, all foolish and headlong. The blade whips through the air, smooth, strikes him in the forehead, and then he's down, too, and the last sound is the gurgle of the dying man.
Nikos wipes his blade on the man's sleeve, and goes to fetch the other one. The wisps hover behind him, following along--two close, one at a distance, maybe waiting for its master. Kostos is there, coming on the scene. Nikos confirms that with a glance out of his periphery, clocking him and then moving on.
He does wait until his brother is near enough to compliment him--]
See why people keep you around.
[--in an undertone. He's not yet seen the lights in the house. He's busy crouching over the dead guard, his foot braced on the man's shoulder to give him leverage enough to yank free the knife from his head. It comes out with a sick slick sound, and he gets to wiping it down, too.]
Vnᴥ○V
They’re coming down.
[ He’s too close to the house now to see the all of the second-floor windows, but one of the wisps isn’t, drifting up above their heads, so he knows. The fires from bedside lanterns and stoked fires have turned into fires in the hallway braziers, glowing dim and static, and someone inside calls a name from a distance that could stand to be longer. Gabriele. The cut throat or the punctured forehead?
Kostos draws two more wisps across the Veil and jerks his head toward the upper window. There’s no going up the stairs, now, and the best information they have says it’s up there, on display beneath a portrait. ]
Can you make the window?
no subject
[So like, let them come down.
But that's not reasonable. And Nikos isn't psychopathic. He enjoys his work for the cause; he enjoys swift justice, clearing the way for change. He doesn't get off on it. Or not exactly, anyways. It's complicated, and nothing he'd put into word, and also not any of Kostos' business, or any of his interest.
So. Nikos gives one last wipe of his knife against the dead guard's tunic and flips it around again, shoves it back to his belt. He's less assured when he looks to the window, but the tell of that uncertainty is a small thing, and probably nothing Kostos--over half their lives a stranger--could read besides.]
Can you make the window? [Neither a yes or a no. The voice from inside repeats the name again, Gabriele, demands a report. Not time to fuck around.] Either give me a boost or get up there and give me a hand up.
no subject
I can keep them down here.
[ Strong barriers. A stream of wisps, short the several he's planning to send after Nikos to watch his back. When he puts his mind to it, it takes a lot of work for anyone to be able to touch him at all—assuming there are no other mages, no Templars, no magebane—
He's pretty sure it will be fine. ]
no subject
If this is you being some noble fucking martyr--
[Don't. Grumbled, it sounds more like a complaint than any concern. And it is a complaint. But he's being dramatic, and Kostos is actually being helpful so, fine, yes--he puts one foot in Kostos' cupped hands, gets his fingertips on the edge of the windowsill--
It takes effort. He's not exactly built, except in the area of his gut. The wall-scrabbling is ungainly but minimal--and he steps at one point on Kostos' head, which he chooses to take as a kind of insult instead of a clumsy mistake--and eventually he gets an arm over the windowsill, and then he can haul himself up, properly, brace feet against the side of the wall and vault over.
Clumsy. But out of Kostos' view, and like the professional he fucking is, he shrinks against the wall and holds very still once he's gotten himself to rights. His hand on his knife, his eyes playing about the room. The unearthly light of his brother's wisps light up the room as they rise over the windowsill. Nikos glares at them. It's an appreciative glare.
No one is in the room. He shoves himself to his feet and moves toward the nearest piece of furniture: a desk.]