closed.

[exequy]

WHO: Ilias, Isaac, Kostos, Leander
WHAT: Four mages stuck in a library (a bottle episode)
WHEN: Early Solace
WHERE: Outside Starkhaven
NOTES: Probably some violence at some point

Comments

[libratus]

He's still got the pad of a thumb caught between teeth, an instinctive effort to trade one hurt for another (the burn is small, the pain of it sharp as it is absurd for its disproportion, the bite a welcome distraction). Too quick, it drops from lips to lap again, a sliver of soft motion in the dark.

The striker rings louder. Ilias lets it, for a beat.

"If that's what you want." To leave. To keep leaving.

Or—

Metal scrapes across wood, the striker pulled over the edge between two fingers, and the silver case pushed across the ledge into its place. An offer. Sooner or later, they are going to have to figure out how to be alone together again — for more than a minute.

[wythersake]

What do you want? Would bait an argument, the one that they're going to have sooner or later (can feel it every time they speak; pressure before teeth). They're going to have it, but he doesn't want to have it now, with an audience and the wind already howling. This isn't really alone. This hasn't been alone for a while.

In better light the inclination of his forehead could pass for gratitude as he fishes out a cigarette. Isaac doesn't reach for the striker, and when the old spark flicks between his own fingers, he doesn't reach for Ilias either. The trade's been made. They can both help themselves.

A minute nears, then passes. Finally,

"It's Isaac." He says, quiet, and says it the right way: Sight, not seeing. I, not me. "You say it Isaac."

The words flatten dull, excoricated of what intimacy they might have held. Maybe that's as it should be, dead flesh peeled back to air.

[libratus]

It isn't how he wanted to hear it. Warm on the breath, maybe. Close against a shoulder. A mark of trust finally earned, a bond made solid, not a knife opening a corpse. To have even that vain, stupid hope so aseptically gutted—

He doesn't answer, at first. The dip where jaw muscle meets cheekbone is quite distinct. This isn't really alone.

"I don't want pieces of you."

He'd returned the shirt well washed. Taken every scrap of parchment and plant he'd ever sent back as if intimacy could be cut away just as cleanly. Better to try than to leave so many little dreams dangling like nerve endings between them.

"Not if they're to be the last."

[wythersake]

Isaac watches him tense, and for a moment, it’s almost satisfying.

Then Ilias speaks.

Frustration is obvious to those who know where to look. Genuine: The slight cant of his mouth (hide that missing tooth). The pinch about his eyes, subtler than the arches and scowls that punctuate a public performance.

Digging through his chest the better part of a drunk hour; cataloguing, its slim contents undisturbed for chess pieces, the handle of a knife, a hidden phial. Looking for the rest long after he knew it was gone – letters and notes and tokens of life –

Eventually, he’d poured the bottle out.

"I didn’t think he should have something that you didn’t."

As though they’re synonyms: Didn’t think, didn’t want. The curve of a shoulder, that would have been nice.

[libratus]

Time will dull this. That is how it is supposed to work, isn't it? One can lose one's mother tongue for lack of exposure, surely the lines of a face will not always be strung to memory.

(Is that what he wants? To forget? Or just--)

Still too soon to have unlearned these. The softening of his jaw is slight in turn, cast against to the drop of his gaze. The explanation isn't much consolation; it matters to him more than it has any right to, now.

"He should not have done that," —unnecessary at this point, perhaps, but he hadn't said it before. He says it now the way one turns the latches on the door at the end of the night. Neat, orderly, one, two. Everything in its place.

"I have asked him to leave you be, in the future.”

[wythersake]

He should be grateful for that. Should leave this be.

"Have you been knighted?" Bubbles out, despite himself. A pivot from sincerity; too close to the fight they're not having. The one they're not going to have here. "Are you his keeper?"

That the purpose of the fucking phylactery, the scar across his chest? Leander shouldn't have done it. Ilias shouldn't have had to ask.

(And Isaac, Isaac should leave this be. The door's shut. No sense in pressing eye to keyhole — what happens will happen. Someone could get hurt in there. It won't be him. He should be grateful for that.)

[libratus]

A nerve glanced, shows itself in the tendons of a hand round a cigarette case. Not the first time the question has been raised; his answer hasn't gotten any better.

"He listens to me." He doesn't listen to anyone else. (Ilias doesn't know what happens if he stops.) Better explanations exist, simmer near the surface, but not the sort to be risked on Averesch's ears. He turns a tight glance to the window instead, shaking his head.

"Would you have me do nothing?"

Like you?

[wythersake]

A season ago Ilias had looked so frightened. A season ago, and now he and Leander whisper like children.

"I'd have you be honest with one of us," Isaac. Himself. "About what you're doing."

[libratus]

One of them.

It isn't ineffective. It doesn't not bring that flicker of openness to his eyes, the cautious consideration that's always come before a question posed, a hypothetical teased out between them, a position subtly shifted. Only there isn't anything else, this time. There isn't a them. Ilias takes a last pull of his cigarette; stamps it against the window sill.

"If you do not want to be part of this, then don't."

[wythersake]

He turns aside. Smokes.

"Don't forget the striker."

[libratus]

He doesn't. Manages not to throw it anyone either. After all, they're not fighting.