faderift | The human element drags you down (open)

WHO: Julius and others
WHAT: Catch-all for Harvestmere
WHEN: At a point in the month when he's not offsite for drake wrangling; we can handwave specifics unless you need not to
WHERE: In and around the Gallows, mainly
NOTES: While participation is obviously opt-in OOCly, if you'd like Julius to track down your character without their IC permission, that's a thing that can definitely happen. Ditto involvement with Sashamiri projects - if you want in but haven't been already, Julius is not above corralling people. Dive in or hmu if you want a hook beyond what's here. (Also note that there is discussion of sex between consenting adults in the closed thread for Petrana.)

I. Official business (open)

Now that the projects are sharing personnel, Julius is less concerned about recruiting, per se, and more interested in keeping track of all the people with their fingers in various red lyrium or Corypheus-flavored pies. So while he keeps semi-regular office hours, he is also getting a bit more proactive at looking people up. On a given day, he has a list of people who have participated in recent Sashamiri missions, people whose names turn up in reports, or people who other people have told him to talk to. He also noted down those who had comments about things other than mabari statues, the last time Alistair reached out.

There's plenty to do. It's just a matter of finding people with the skills and the time to get it done.

II. Off the clock (open)

Julius tries to make himself approachable, and he knows not everyone will want to encounter someone first in an official capacity. (It's not so different from the Circle, in some ways, though he knows better than to observe as much aloud.) He makes a point of eating at reasonable meal times, and sitting with people he knows a little less well when the chance arises. He's a regular at the organized Wicked Grace games, and neither wins nor loses enough to draw attention. And, for all he isn't part of the Research division anymore, he's not infrequently in the library. In any of those places, he's happy to talk with acquaintances old and new.

What he likes now and then, however, is a bit of time on the top of the tower, watching the city below or the sunset over the water. He's not opposed to company, but for once, the company isn't the point. It's a thing he does just because he likes it, and there are few enough of those.

III. Annotations (closed to Petrana)

Julius had been looking for something else entirely -- he'd mislaid a book, and couldn't remember whether he'd last been reading it in her room or his. When he found the small codex, he'd not intended to pry, exactly, but he'd seen his name and been unable to resist.

However, his particular attitude when she discovered him was less of a man salaciously invading his lover's privacy and more of a scholar engaged in revisions. He had a pen in hand and was making notes on a loose sheet of paper he'd gathered at some point, concentration serious enough that he doesn't immediately break his train of thought when she enters the room.

IV. Wildcard

[If you want to talk about something specific that won't fit I or II, grab me on Discord or Plurk and let's make it happen.]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

He idly massages her ankle as he considers that answer. "I'm glad you do," he said, after a moment. "I don't want to push you, either. It's not as if I'm unfamiliar with the impulse to keep a bit of one's control intact." Even his relationships with the lovers he'd been closest to had been necessarily colored by the knowledge they had to be secret, or temporary, or both. It had been the rare moment he'd been able to forget that. Still, he can't help the feeling she means something a bit different. (He thinks of how they've never spoken of her Marius, even after coming face to face, in a manner of speaking. Then again... he doesn't want to push her.)

That thought prods him a bit farther than he might have otherwise gone. "I'm not unhappy," he says, "and I trust you'd let me know if you were. But finding your notes did make me think... it's easy to just go along. Maker knows we're both busy enough, splitting our attention a dozen ways or more, but I don't want you to think that I take you for granted. Take this for granted. I know it's something I wasn't entirely prepared for."

“Well, we've been—”

Petrana pauses. Her head tilts, as she considers her ankle in his warm grasp and the phrasing I'm not unhappy and counts weeks and months. It's a startling realisation that they have been not taking one another for granted (at least mostly) (she might say) for, now, upwards of a year.

It merits a pause.

Finally, “I should think we might be beginning to get the hang of it,” faintly.

He smiles, though he's not sure how to read her tone. (He either hasn't done the math, or did it before now.) "I think so. But I know it's not always an easy conversation to begin. When something is causing discomfort, there's a built-in pressure to do something about it. But for this..." He trails, watching her. After a moment, he says, "If it could be better, I think it's worth the effort. To try to make it better. We don't know how long we'll have, it's true, but if it's a long time I think we'll be well served but establishing good habits."

A pause, then he adds: "I'd like it to be a long time." She couldn't mistake the vulnerability for anything other than deliberate.

“I had not thought it had been so long, already,” she says, eventually; they meandered through their relationship with quiet ease for long enough now that it had seemed at once both most natural and most new. A refreshing change; a habit easy to fall into.

It rather supports his point, she thinks, after a moment.

“—I don't mean to say I wouldn't wish that as well. I was merely struck...yes, I think that you're. I would like that, and you are right. We should be well-served by perhaps...”

It has been so easy they haven't felt pressed to consider if it might be better, again.

“A bit of judicious purpose.”

At her comment, he does do the math... then laughs, rueful. "Maker. I suppose I've lost the opportunity to surprise you with a romantic gesture for the anniversary. Next time, perhaps." An optimistic assumption that they'd both be there, in one piece, a year hence. "Or perhaps we can have a bit of delayed celebration now. Carve out an evening when neither of us will be too badly missed."

Maybe Melys won't even turn up in the middle of it to set something on fire.

As calculated and deliberate as Petrana can be—it is a testament to something, probably, that while there is some perception of Julius drawn around by her finger beneath his chin the fact that she's nearly a decade his junior is not why—there's something wonderfully disarming about her when she smiles, suddenly:

“I would like to celebrate you and I. We are, as you say, worth the effort. No?”

Yes.

(No promises about Melys.)

Then, “Perhaps—would you like to—well, you see, it was a terrible nuisance to relocate my desk the once, but perhaps it might be time that we allowed Riftwatch the use of a room again.” His, for instance, if he were to join her in hers. “I suppose I am proposing a chore more than a celebration—”

He laughs at that, warm. "I mean, they can be two separate things, the celebration and the moving. I suppose it's true that I work in my room less frequently than you do, so if it's a matter of convenience..."

Teasing, a bit, now that he's on surer ground.

“It has always seemed the wiser thing to have a second desk than to give into inertia and simply pull a cot into my office—” which does, knowing her, seem altogether too plausible. At least if she's working in her quarters, she's more likely to actually go to bed at some point.

Especially if there's a warm body in it, though he's as likely to be reading something work-related as not.

"A cot is altogether too small," he says, definitively. "I suppose there's nothing for it, then." Julius leaned in to kiss her, properly. "We're both terribly practical people, it makes romantic gestures a bit harder to come by. But I think we do better together than apart."

Practically and romantically.

He adds, "I'd warn you about my habits, but you know all of them already, at this point."

Very seriously, with her palm against his cheek— “I have forgiven you your terrible Wicked Grace game.”

"And I forgive you the heartless theft of my socks," he returns, instantly, though not managing such a straight face as hers.

“If you cannot adequately defend them—”

"I was attempting to be gallant, which shows how well that is rewarded. I will grant it is partially my own fault for underestimating you, but in my defense, you were actively encouraging me to do so and you're very convincing."

The human element drags you down (open)

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