faderift | closed.

There is a certain expectation, when one opens a door — particularly when one opens a door at the end of a swift and long-strided march toward a hallway that need promise nothing else but not here — that there will be space on the other side to continue through it. None of them is so lucky tonight. The door swings, air chases its void, and the heel of Ilias's hand catches hard on the frame to stop him barreling straight into them both.

Mussed would be kind word for how he looks. A clammy flush still fading. Impeccable night shirt collar askew. Details that don't matter half as much to him as getting out of this room, right up until the moment they do.

If his gaze slides directly to Kostos and sticks there, well.

"Move." Out of his way. He isn't going to manage a please.

It’s not the best time for Ilias to be issuing any commands.

No time would be a good time, but most other times Kostos would just refuse to follow them, maybe pretend not to have heard them, maybe give an order of his own in return—fuck off, probably.

But now Kostos swings his half-incredulous, half-outraged look from Isaac to Ilias, considers him and his displaced collar for a beat, and slowly pushes himself up off of the stairs to make space for Ilias to squeeze through.

That he sticks his foot into that space as soon as Ilias tries to use it isn’t premeditated, exactly, but it is absolutely deliberate.

Thank the Maker at least, for once, Kostos isn’t going to argue with him.

—a bright spot of relief that lasts only as long as it takes hands to drop from doorframe and shoe to meet outstretched shoe.

There isn’t an elegant way to launch headfirst down a stairwell. Doubly so, when one was not at their most elegant to begin with. Ilias doesn’t manage it. Does manage to get a leg under him, to twist but not hold, and an arm and shoulder that is better than a skull for cracking into stone walls in a tangle of skidding robes.

If anyone needs to brush up on their Nevarran expletives, now is the time.

Isaac didn't see a thing.

That's his story, and he's sticking to it — an old one, quite serviceable — though he stumbles up with an impressively stupid expression. It resolves around absence: No flash of red or white bone. He'll be fine.

Fine.

It wasn't Kostos he was looking at, and it certainly wasn't Ilias' foot, and so he hasn't seen a thing. At all. The look he shoots Kostos has nothing to do with it (isn't any cleverer than before). A few steps down; when he offers an arm there's still air between them.

At the far bottom of the stairs, a baby begins to wail, Nevarran cursing soon joined by a medley of Trade.

"Are you alright?"

A certain weaver calls from below, and is shushed.

A second before, the door certainly wasn't open; Leander certainly wasn't there. A slice of him between wood and stone, leaning to look. Isaac reaching down, Ilias at the end of his arm: safe. Silent flicks of his eyes. He settles.

By the time anyone turns to look, he is staring at Kostos, completely impassive, taking every consumable detail of his behaviour in this moment.

Kostos isn’t looking at Leander, and would give only a passing fuck about his staring if he were. He’s still looking down past Isaac at Ilias, with a sullen, shifting mixture of resentment, and concern, and regret—for Ilias and for himself, because he’d wanted to do it for exactly as long as it took to do it and not many moments more, the same way a dieter wants a piece of cake until they’re looking at the empty plate and wondering what the fuck is wrong with them.

Whether or not he takes it more seriously than cake depends on a definitive answer to the weaver’s disembodied question. The cursing is a good sign, at least, even if the baby’s distant wailing has Kostos’ fingers curling into fidgety fists.

Adrenaline is still quaking under his skin when he grips Isaac's forearm -- almost doesn't, shame sinking his gaze faster than any bruised pride, but his limbs are useful as aspic, ankle buckling with a sharp, stubborn intake of breath under his first attempt at leverage (twisted, not broken) so-- fine. Why not. On top of everything else, why not accept help from the only person in this stairwell he knows has a good reason to be upset with him right now. He pulls the hand back as soon as he's upright; there's a wall he can lean on that he hasn't done anything shitty to today.

"Fine," is hissed down toward the weaver. He wipes at a scuff on his jaw with a sleeve. What a fucking mess.

Maybe anger ought to be what he's feeling. Maybe it looks like that, the shaky expulsion of breath half mocking instead of miserable, the lift of a chin a challenge instead of an exposed jugular.

"Is that all?" is for Kostos.

Or are you coming down here?

Edited 2019-08-09 05:41 (UTC)

"Don't,"

Under his breath. For fuck's sake.

He’s alright.

And Kostos—who does wear his genuine feelings right there on his face, whatever anyone might think is hiding behind the scowls—it’s just that his feelings are almost always awful—

He shifts through furious regret, into relief, into the sort of keenly focused glare that could as easily precede a fuck as a fight. Not in this specific case. In this specific case it would definitely be a fight. But the sort he might feel better after, instead of worse.

Isaac says don’t. Isaac can fuck off.

But he’s barely shifted his feet to start down the stairs when the baby screams again with renewed ferocity, perhaps having realized whatever finger or bit of cloth she’d been given to suck wasn’t going to make life any less confusing and uncomfortable, and Kostos pulls his posture back, focus diverting and darkening, and stays where he is.

He says, “That’s all.”

—On the other hand, by the time anyone turns to look, Leander may already have come and gone, back to the bench and window, leaving the library door not quite closed. It was enough of a snapshot. Any further commotion, within reason, will go uninvestigated unless it comes to him.

(He'll be quiet on the ride back.)

The baby's wail echoes between cramped walls, and Ilias watches Kostos's expression change the way one might a receding lifeline, the whites slipping visible in his eyes for one brief, desperate second. Because a fight would feel so much better right now; because at least that one thing, they might both understand.

But not tonight.

Unfortunately, there isn't actually much of anywhere to go now that he's down here. A screaming child; bodies huddled close and hushed in the dim light beyond. Frustration wells up, works at his jaw; if he has to walk right back up past Kostos right now—

"Don't wait up," turning the other direction instead. He'll go sleep in the rain if he has to.

closed.

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sorry for cheapo tag

people pay a lot of money for minimalist art

uninvestigayed: the most accurate typo

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