open | my mother told me don't get in trouble

[hemitheoi]

WHO: Deimos + You!
WHAT: An Arrival Log of One (1) Jerk No One Wanted, But He Is Here Now, We Guess
WHEN: He considers time beneath him as a construct, obviously
WHERE: The Gallows
NOTES: Nothing overt, but in general warnings for Deimos being a mouthy asshole at the best of times.

i. closed | eshal
No one had wanted to talk to him for very long. Not if they could help it. One word of his accent, his appearance, his general bearings and that glint of green on his palm, they'd given him directions and promptly hurried on as he tried to figure out where it was he was supposed to be sending himself to do this properly and not get killed on behalf of the green burning ember. More magic than he had ever been willingly been around in his life and nothing about his current circumstances was endearing him to it any time soon.

But at least he was here, even if his mood was bad. Knocking on her door waiting to be let in.

ii. open | the gallows
He's got his orders to mind himself, he's no one's friend, and nor does he intend to change that much. Being left here - he's exposed. Trying to decide what to do, where to go, there isn't a fight to be had and nothing about him that he wants to ingratiate himself with particularly. Which is just as well, when he stands a foot over most of them, it's easy to just march on by like he knows what he wants.

Supposing, maybe, he has money, and so he understands it, that is how you get a decent drink. He doesn't seem to really get what the bartender wants from him when it comes to the little golden things he had been given as part of his pay. Chrysis and the other Tama had not taught him these things, always handling it - telling him where he went, what he wanted to get with which piece of metal.

He understands they all have different values - and now understands why so many of his brothers opt simply not to speak than look a fool. He holds up the coins of different types to the barkeeper and grunts and points to a drink then offers the money up for him to take the right piece he wants. Easy to affect a furious scowl like he might know if the man is ripping him off. He's been told that is something he must watch out for. Not that Deimos has the slightest hope of knowing what that might entail, but where understanding doesn't always happen, anger and the fear inspired afterwards would certainly do the trick for communication.

And gets a huge tankard of ale in return. Ha. This Bas money business wasn't so hard. What did they all go on about?

So smug in his minor victory, mutters to himself with it: "Bas aren't so strange." He takes a sip of his drink like he's won a great battle.

Unknowing that he just paid way - way too much for that drink.

iii. open | quarters
He doesn't particularly know what to do with himself when he isn't drinking or training or whoring whilst waiting for orders. But orders don't seem to be coming as quick as he likes, and inactivity suits him ill. So with his door open, utterly transparent as he could be to anyone spying on him as it was, he sits for a while, just in his chair, one leg stretched out in front of him, oversized to everything about him, not really sure what to do with himself.

So he decides he doesn't like how this room is set up. His room, one by himself, thank the Prophet that someone else had decided that before he kicked someone about it. The furniture is laughably little next to him, as it was. So it's nothing to pick up the bed, the desk, the chair, and push it over to the other side. Mindless grunt work that at least feels useful. His palms itching that simple frustration.

Then look at it again. ( It's painfully uncreative, quite literally just the room but reversed ).

And decide that in turn, he liked it where it was the first time. Pick it all up, and start again.

Comments

iii. perhaps a little wildcard too who knows

[sulahnan]

He's been at the Gallows a day before she finds her way to his quarters. With how fast news travels among the ranks, it's not as if she didn't know he was here. He's kind of hard to miss.

So she comes to stand in the doorway, silent for a moment before she leans against the jamb as if her stomach isn't doing cartwheels.

"I thought that was you," she says, the corner of her mouth ticking into a smirk. "Been a while."

here we heckin' are

[hemitheoi]

The chair drops to the ground with a thud. The heavy wood settled back in place as he rolls himself back to his full height. Shoulders shifting to settle, his weight settling easier.

But he doesn't hurry, because, despite the familiarity, there is time there. There is time and everything has happened between the last time he saw, to the fights afterwards and the haze that so often fills his life. That at least with his back to her, he can take the moment trickle those details to the forefront of his mind. Placing information in something like order. Of her hair, the prickle of scent, the way her toes curled against his back and the taste of her voice where he consumed it out of her mouth. Her laughter and the way she rolled her eyes. The way she killed and the way she kissed him.

Fixing his face out of memory to something simpler, he turns, nodding his head the once in greeting. Taking one slow step to cross the distance. "And you haven't lost your touch for walking quietly."

[sulahnan]

"'Course not," The laugh comes easy--too easy, perhaps, when she's trying to keep her cool--and she tilts her head slightly. "Not that it's hard when you're...rearranging furniture?"

It's a little bit absurd, imagining him doing something so mundane as rearranging a bedroom to suit him. A little like finding out for the first time that your parents don't know everything, or trying to imagine Captain--er, Commander Flint as a child. Surely he just sprung forth into being as a grown man, right?

"So what...what brings you to Riftwatch, then?" Good job, Athessa, that only sounded a teensy bit awkward. Not at all like you're worried about why he's here.

[hemitheoi]

It was just something to do, he means to say. But then again, it doesn't really matter, any more than the fact he had arranged it in the first place. So he does what he usually does, and says nothing he does not want to. Fixing his features to what does -

Rather the question that he'd rather not answer, but that too, he supposes he doesn't have to do that either.

All he must do is raise his hand. The green burning ember embedded in his skin, bright and pulsating with painful light. "This."

[sulahnan]

That is so far from the answer she expected, or the one she suspected, that she nearly forgets that fear in the back of her mind.

She also forgets herself and closes the distance between them, wide-eyed and reaching for that hand to get a closer look. She doesn't know many of the Rifters, doesn't spend much time with anyone that caught a shard, so other than that incident with Bartimaeus, this is the closest she's come to being able to indulge her curiosity.

"Wow," she whispers, her fingers feather-light on the skin of his palm.

[hemitheoi]

He ought to have expected it - she was always over-eager, always getting into things that she shouldn't, and he tugged his hand free momentarily. "Don't touch it."

Like he was sick, like it was a disease. Far be it for him to show concern over another but magic was not to be toyed with, for either of their sakes. If he was not what he was, did not hold some hope of removing the damn thing, he might seek to remove the hand permanently.

But then he truly would be without use.

"I cannot predict what it might do." It's at least easy to lift his fingers out of her reach and away for the time being.

[sulahnan]

She takes a half-step back when he takes his hand away, and she realizes that perhaps she was being too familiar, too...much. Too eager to touch him when she's not even sure if he wants anything to do with her.

But she doesn't apologize. Instead, she shrugs as if it suits her fine, and tucks a stray curl behind her ear. "It doesn't just do what you will it to do? I thought that was how it worked." She chuckles to herself, and at herself. "I also thought it'd feel different, but it just feels like a hand."

A hand that she didn't want to let go of, but she ignores that.

ii.

[unshut]

That, Fitcher thinks from the far side of the Lowtown taproom, is an easy mark if she ever laid eyes upon one. As truly countless Antivans have said before her: one must strike when the iron is hottest.

It would be an insult to her homeland were she not to rise from her seat at the long table as the prodigious Qunari turns from the bar with his tankard of matching proportion. She goes as far to raise her hand to assist in drawing his attention before calling out: "Messere? Messere - a moment of your time, if you please."

[hemitheoi]

He just wanted a drink. Everyone had gotten the general message so far. Don't talk to him. Leave him alone. He just wants his drink. So she doesn't bother to respond as he takes his drink to an empty table, she can just wait, sitting himself down.

Meets her eyes, takes a long, slow mouthful before he wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. Then finally: "What?"

[unshut]

My, isn't he curt?

The older woman with her lovely dark hair doesn't lower herself back onto the bench. Instead, she motions to the bench on the far side. Doesn't that look like a better place to sit than some empty old table jammed into the corner? "Won't you join my friend and I? We've just been arguing about something and we'd like a third opinion. An outside party to help us settle the matter, if you will."

Her hand settles then on the shoulder of the man sat beside her. He's a broad fellow, quite good looking in that cheerful and affably masculine kind of way. Which is what she would say were she were to remark on it personally, which of course she would be happy to if anyone asked for her comment. But that's neither here nor there, and besides if they're keeping count then the Qunari is at least a hand broader than dear Barrow is.

[thereneverwas]

The good-looking, cheerful and affably masculine individual next to Fitcher turns to smile impishly at the stranger, at whom he'd previously glanced when indicated by her.
However, now that he's got a good look at his face, Barrow's posture abruptly stiffens and the smile is gone, and he turns forward to stare into his mug with the most obvious air of oh, shit that it's possible for a person to muster.

[hemitheoi]

His elbows lean on the table as he pushes himself forward, the drink in hand. Still holding on it in front of his lips, rather than putting it down. His opinion? What would she do with it?

Looks like her companion might not be keen on it, either way.

"And?" Realises, in turn, that isn't really an answer. "What are you talking about?"

He doesn't offer them to sit and join him, but that is hardly a surprise. They could go or stay, whatever came of it.

[unshut]

"We were discussing the merits of two fighters in a particular boxing ring we know, and which would win if they were matched against one another. One has quite a lot of brute strength going for him - a solid, well built sort of fellow. Not without cleverness of course, but very much of the barrel on You know the type, I'm certain. The other is quite agile, very light on her feet. Flashy and smart in the way that determined young women with a prodigous amount of hair often are-- Anyway, I'm no fighter myself but you look like you could be one and I'd like a well-versed second opinion before we make our way to the fight and I place any wagers. My friend here is prone to bias."

She claps Barrow cheerfully on the shoulder, ignorant of that sharpish look he's acquired in the interim.

[hemitheoi]

He holds his next sip in his mouth for a second as he thinks for a second. If it were about him, well, then the answer was obvious: he would. Because he was the best fighter living. That wasn't even an equation.

But what he is - is trained. No, perhaps he doesn't know how money works, no perhaps he doesn't know where the difference between obvious ones of this Bas or the one next to her. He's sure it matters them a lot, they got upset over odd things.

But fighting? He weighs it slowly, against his own experience, his lifetime training, watching, learning. He swallows, then speaks. "Whoever has learned to take pain better will win."

And he takes another drink.

its ya boi.

[saam]

Eshal is leaning out an open window to spit chewing tobacco when someone knocks. She has a moment of worry that someone important will see her doing something embarrassing, before realizing no one in Riftwatch who's important actually knocks.

She spits the tobacco into an unfortunate gargoyle, and heads in. Voice loud and full-- "Unlocked! Come in!"

Her accent is unmistakably, perhaps proudly, Qunari.

[hemitheoi]

Suddenly, it makes every bit of sense why it was that he was sent here, why they kept sending him this way with a firm bit of direction. He might not know the world in smaller details, but he knows a voice similar in the way that matters and in turn he calls back in that same distinctive accent.

"Finally."

Because he pushes the door open, and so easily fills up that door frame with all seven feet of him. That broad set of a proud member of the army.

[saam]

Eshal is tall for a human woman, and her stance says antaam antaam antaam. She was picking up some papers from her desk, but upon seeing a horned man- well.

"Shit," she says, switching immediately into smooth and flawlss Qunlat. "We're either under attack, or made an alliance nobody told me about."

But his bearing, his dress... he's no vashoth, unless he became one very recently.

[hemitheoi]

Finally, finally, someone who made sense. Someone who didn't at odds with themselves. He had been amongst the Bas, he had observed them as well as any, or perhaps keener by weight of training. But that didn't make any of them make sense to him, not really. So varied, it made his head hurt at times that there was no way to understand what they were going on about half the time when they spoke.

"Neither." He responds in Qunlat the same. His hand lifts, the green light burning on his open palm - almost - like he means to put her at ease. Here he is, empty-handed, with nothing else to speak for him.

But one Antaam to another, there was no bit of either of them that was not a weapon to be used, whether there was one in hand or not. "I can no longer serve my intended purpose." It does not say who he belongs to, exactly, a careful choice of words.

Then again, was that not how the Sage had looked him over when she had seen what had become of her favourite Sten? How Chrysis, in turn, had wept over wasted use?

[saam]

She hisses through her teeth. "They threw you out, then. How did you end up here?"

She motions for him to sit on a couch near the wall, and walks over to a cabinet filled with jars and jugs of dark liquid. He'll recognize maraas-lok when he sees it, and unlike everyone else in this fucking place, he'll know how to handle it.

[hemitheoi]

He grunts in answer, purposefully vague so far as it matters. The other details don't matter, it is all that comes of it. "This is where they say you go when you're infected. So I came."

He goes where she points, and he still is comically oversized on all these little things, awkward shuffle to fit his legs in a way that is comfortable, his arm hooking on the arm of the couch, stretching out at the angle.

"How did you manage to get that here?"

ii;

[filthydipper]

One dwarf is leaving the table past Deimos giving him the wide berth those with living memory of the Kirkwall occupation would give. Or that anyone with that sort of height disparity would give, difficult to say. That dwarf is Jim and he's half-followed by a slightly shorter dwarf; both of them have been watching because sometimes that's why you go out for the night, just for a bit of light entertainment but some folk need to be up early.

Some folk are not Yngvi. Yngvi who is making the face someone makes when you've just heard a Chantry Sister fart in public for the first time. (You never forget. Neither do they.)

He's only half-heard what's been said as he taps the bar with a coin. "Barley water if that's what you're charging for whatever that is. Unless it's extra for insults."

Hey hi what's up gigantor?

[hemitheoi]

He's just settled too, eyes down, content to ignore everyone else as much as they're keen on ignoring him as he leans against a taller table. Sitting on their seats was pointless at his height. Eyes on the grain of wood in front of him and drinking slow, steady mouthfuls. Every one probably glad that there is nothing else going to happen.

Until Ygnvi speaks, and there's probably a wince for it.

His glance snaps up where he was minding his business, he pulls back. What was the little man going on about? Insults for what? But for the time being, he keeps his silence.

[filthydipper]

Well that's just rude but Yngvi can deal with rude as he takes a swig of his barley water because better that than regular water here (which...well he doubts that it'd be water, it's probably what they wring the bar rags into and no thanks) as he considers. Not completely ignored because the face moved so that means the giant stranger heard him so if he had to count it somewhere then it's a win.

"I said," and he's louder now just in case because who knows maybe it's harder to hear all the way up there not that Thranduil for instance has had any difficulty with it but he's a rifter so the rules are out the window, "was it extra for insults because I mean that's a person. Like me. And you."

He pauses. Takes an excruciatingly slow slurp of his barley water - snails have done this faster than Yngvi has - and looks his new drinking buddy up and down. "Probably."

[hemitheoi]

If Qunari had middle names, rude would probably be his. But since his nickname does more or less translate to 'I'm Crying' and 'Fuck God Why' and 'Make It Stop', close enough right?

Which is to say that since the little man insists on speaking despite Deimos best and considered efforts to keep ignoring him and enjoying his drink, it doesn't seem to stop. So he grunts, sighs, and thuds his partially drained drink down. Then looks up to fix him with a look, which says it despite the word that follows.

"What?"

[filthydipper]

Well Yngvi's adopted - no, still not honestly touching that, how many years is it weird to consider a thing raw - slapped the surname gutter on him, more or less. Anyone doing manners in Kirkwall is Orlesian or up to something.

"Bas," Yngvi has the Darktown ability to stretch any word out as long as he needs to which is about seventeen syllables in this particular case, "like I know what it means, would've been a bit dead years ago if I didn't y'know so I'm Yngvi and you are..."