closed.

[byblow]

WHO: Alistair & Sabine
WHAT: SHE
WHEN: Kingsway
WHERE: The Gallows
NOTES: n/a

This is not his beautiful horse. But it is a beautiful horse, shiny-coated and chestnut with white socks, and becoming prettier by the second while Alistair works a knot out of its mane with his fingers and a brush.

“I bet you don’t appreciate this at all,” he tells her. His sleeves are rolled up. He pauses to brush the back of his forearm to see what the bristles feel like, just once back and forth. “Aside from that feeling nice. But we could just shave it off and save everyone a lot of trouble, and you wouldn’t feel ugly at all. Even though you would be. People would be embarrassed to be seen with you.”

The mare does not speak Trade; the mare is busy with her bucket of oats. The rest of Riftwatch’s menagerie is fussing quietly, and outside the stables sailors and dockhands are shouting, periodically dropping something heavy somewhere it shouldn’t be dropped, and shouting louder about that.

Across the harbor, there’s a desk and a stack of books and papers. But there are also a lot of hours left in the day to spend feeling that particular terrible mix of tedium and helplessness in the face of overwhelming odds.

So: horse knots. He’s standing outside the stall, at least—to maintain as long as possible the chance and the illusion that he’ll move on as soon as this knot is taken care of, instead of grooming somebody’s entire horse without permission just to procrastinate.

Comments

[glandival]

Here are the ways that Sabine has thought about how she might engineer running into Alistair:

1. randomly in a crowd, and see if he would pursue when she walks away, very smoothly
2. nakedly at the baths, mermaid-style hair censorship, tu viens souvent ici?
3. creating a net-trap of only mild lethality outside of his quarters
4. after a long delay of avoidance for secret reasons
5. or just

like this, standing half in the shade of the stable's cover, openly watching while he has his attention pitched in a different direction.

She has her wrist wrapped, the one with the green sliver of light that has, in the past, drawn her back for brief moments at a time, and she fidgets with wrappings now as she listens. It's been even longer than the last time she saw him that she bothered with servant skirts and palm-length knives disguised from inspection; she's still in light leathers ideal for travel, with a small blade buckled at her belt, wild hair only half-tamed into a braid. Plenty of fly aways catching gold.

She thinks that in all her idle scheming, she hadn't come down on how bathed she would be. There is still a slight film of grime on her skin, blurring the odd freckle together. Oh well.

"What did you do?" she says, almost surprising herself as she projects across the space. "To earn this demotion, I mean. You are a little grown up to play stable boy."

She can't actually prevent the knife-edge of a smile from starting at the corners of her mouth.

[byblow]

Alistair knows her voice. Obviously. So there’s still the startled flinch at being unexpectedly interrupted and unexpectedly not alone, but by the time he’s turning his head he’s already smiling, brush raised, ready to banter back—

And he stays like that for a second. Gesticulates ineffectually with the brush like a wagging finger. He had a retort. He’ll have it again any moment now. Her nose looks nice with that smudge of dirt on it.

“Stable man,” finally burbles out.

He’s done better. But fine. He lowers the brush. The horse buffs and stamps a foot; the horse can deal.

“Did you just get in?” Of course she just got in. “I mean—hello.”

[glandival]

Beginning smile broadens into a real one, Sabine standing hands on hips and tipping her head to deliver a frank appraisal. Somehow, they are both whole and hale, in spite of haunting Warden dreams and invasive rift magic growing beneath skin and muscle and, you know. War.

Languid steps carry her forward, and when she hits the line where a comfortable conversational distance could be maintained, she steps over it, standing then within easy reach. She doesn't put her hands on him, still resting at her waist as she peers up at his face. "Hello."

(Maybe she should have had a bath after she threw her stuff into whatever available room was presented to her, but. It's fine.)

The horse stamps a hoof again.

This has Sabine's nose wrankling in amusement. "Am I interrupting?"

[byblow]

"My standing appointment with—"

A glance back at the horse which, again, doesn't belong to him.

"—Princess Amelia, yes. We're very close."

Another gesture with the brush. This time the wiggly, useless sort of thing that means he doesn't know what to do with it. Putting it down is an option he's considering, but he hasn't decided, and if she'd stopped to take a bath he would honestly have been offended, at the delay, at being deprived of the nose smudge.

"But I can come back tomorrow, or, ah. How long are you here?"

A day, he'd guess. Maybe three if he's lucky.

[glandival]

Sabine's hands close over the brush, silencing meaningless fidget and the possibility of distraction, misdirection, and also it means her fingers splay over his and she is not oblivious to that point of contact even if her expression doesn't change.

Well, it does change a little, but at his question.

But it can't be nervousness, because Sabine doesn't afraid of anything!!

"Because the Inquisition is doing so well," ha ha, "that they do not need me anymore, so." She looks down at the horse brush to go and tug it out of his hand. Now it is she who would like a prop for the sake of meaningless fidget, the possibility of distraction. "I thought I would join Riftwatch."

[byblow]

“Oh,” Alistair says, and his smile stretches wider.

No one has ever accused him of overconfidence. (Not credibly, anyway. Morrigan accusing him of being overconfident in his ability to read doesn’t count.) But there’s a limit to even the most ingrained uncertainty and self-doubt, and Sabine’s fingers shove him right over it, past stupid questions like are you seeing anyone or mayest I toucheth your bum a little.

He says: “Youuu missed me.”

And they’re doing necessary work here, and she has her anchor and her motives. All of that. He knows. If she were really the sort of person to put anything that important aside for him, she wouldn’t be the sort of person he’s going to kiss—and he is. He’s getting there. He’s releasing the brush without resistance so he can duck down and scoop her up (there’s the bum touchething) to eye-level in a laced-finger sling.

“You were crying yourself to sleep over my manly jawline and rustic Fereldan scent. Let the world burn,” in a reckless approximation of her accent, “I cannot live without that nose.”

[glandival]

Boot heels lift off the ground, and then a little more as Sabine hitches her legs against the outsides of his, hand and hand-holding-horse-brush landing on his shoulders. There's that flash of warning in her eye as he closes in on her, which isn't quite as believable when those same eyes have laugh wrinkles at the corners.

And her smile has blossomed into a full fangy grin, so she brings her hand up to splay across his face as if to cover both general handsomeness as well as his eyes, and obscure from him the fact he is making her laugh. It doesn't work too great.

On either count. "Don't you know," she says, "I have killed Corypheus myself. Saved Orlais. I have come for my prize."

Her hand has slipped back away from his face by now and is instead cradling his skull with her fingers slipped between the short waves of his hair. She grips a little as she stares confronting into his eyes, the edge of her expression softening, and then pulling in closer for her mouth to touch his mouth.