faderift | [open]

Benedict nods yet again, seeming satisfied by the answer. Colin's never been known to lie to him, anyway.

With a little sigh, he rests back against the wall. "I'm sorry," he says at last, gloomily, "you just..." Wrong angle. "...I didn't mean to leave you. I wasn't really thinking about anything except what I wanted."

That gets a small, but infinitely warm, smile.

"I suppose I ought not to have taken it so personally," he says, "though it is appreciated. I mean, we didn't know each other that well. It's just, for someone who's been left behind as much as I have, it does mess with one's head when the latest is the only person one managed to have consensual sex with." He's not even sure if that sentence made sense.

This yields a half-smile, and Benedict angles his head sheepishly toward Colin.

"I suppose I'm not used to anyone being bothered that I'm gone," he admits, rolls his eyes a little, and gestures vaguely to the cell. "...serves me right for assuming no one would care."

Colin gives him a look of surprised amusement, then laughs, shoulders shaking.

"You and me both. Shit."

This brings Bene's expression into a full smile, if a slightly sad one.

"Does anyone-- no. Never mind." Knitting his brow, he shakes his head. "I don't want to know."

Colin bobs his head. Whatever the question was, he probably doesn't know the answer anyway.

"Um. Speaking of caring. Do they, um, bring you your bath bucket if you ask for it?"

A wince. He shakes his head.

“...I try not to ask for things.”

"I understand. But it's important that you present yourself well, especially since you're working with Flint now. Grooming yourself as well as you can doesn't just show respect for yourself, it shows respect for your visitors. And I've noticed how much happier you are on those days. Don't discount that. You've already made the mistake of thinking people don't see you. Now that you know better, start again with a different frame of mind.

"Just...ask politely. Don't make demands. Say please and thank you, and you'll avoid the look you're worried about."

Edited 2020-01-13 04:45 (UTC)

"Right. Sorry." It's horrifying to imagine that someone else is more interested in his grooming habits than he is, and it's a factor he's far too long thrown into Colin's realm when it comes to his interment.

"...Maker, what I'd give for a tub of hot water." His eyes dart to Colin. "--I know. Just let me want it."

Colin raises his hands innocently. "I wasn't going to say anything." His hands go down with a shrug. "But tell me what else you miss. Just for the sake of catharsis. I promise I won't try to steal them for you."

Well that's a can of worms best left unopened. And yet, opened it is.
"Oh, Maker," Bene sighs, letting his head thud back against the wall, "...real food. Tea. Wine. A bed. Heat from a fire. Elfroot. Sex." He looks plaintively up at the ceiling.

"Athessa brought some elfroot down to smoke once, and I didn't take any of it. You don't know how fucking hard that was."

That was a fascinating observational exercise allowing Colin to directly consider the commonalities between two people of vastly different backgrounds. Except for the last two things, though. Colin is elbows-deep in elfroot every day and almost never has any urge to smoke any of it. As for sex, Benedict has had sex more recently than Colin. It's not that the lack of it has gone unnoticed, but, well, there's only been the one time, and a standard of frequency hasn't been established, not to mention that any such intimacy is a whole emotional risk Colin is usually exhausted just thinking about.

(He has to gear himself up to physically trusting someone, then tell them about this thing and wait for them to process it, consider the whole time that they might decide it's just too much baggage for a casual hookup, and sometimes he wonders if his feelings for Benedict are mostly a desire not to repeat all that work with someone else.)

"Those are...relatable," he decides is the correct response. "I can start bringing food again, but I strongly suspect 'real' doesn't include your, um, secret ingredient."

Magebane. Which gives Colin a thought.

"Don't you Tevinters use glyphs to take away magic? Seems like I saw those when we were rescuing some of our captured."

It's not like Benedict has had a lot of sex, really, but he's fooled around enough times to know he misses it. It all counts, right?

"Real just means not lukewarm and soggy," he sighs, "whatever happened to Eshal? She used to bring me things sometimes." There's a loftiness to the question, as if he's not a barefoot wretch shivering in a dank cell, but still the hedonist lordling reclining in a plush salon.
"Ah, well. I won't push my luck."

He raises his eyebrows at Colin, considering the question. "Oh. Um. Yes, sometimes, I suppose. I don't know how it works."

Colin's lips twist in sympathy, but he determines to go back to bringing Benedict good food. Something else is rather more troubling at the moment.

"They had wards like it on certain places in the Circle as well, to hear the rumors," Colin says. "You, you're cooperative. You eat the food. The next Venatori we capture? I mean, if it were me, I wouldn't eat or drink what I was given."

"Mm." He nestles into his blankets a little deeper. "Put some of those in here, I'll recite poetry."

He doesn't seem to be taking Colin's thought process too seriously, but then, it's all more or less the same to him in here.

"...Hm?" It takes Colin a second to draw himself out of his Very Serious Thoughts and replay the sounds he heard issue from Benedict. Half a second later, he's suddenly smiling and blushing, rewarding the playful talk with a gentle chuckle.

"Cheeky," he says with no chastisement at all. He makes a mental note to discuss the matter with Flint later, for reasons other than Benedict's comfort. "It would be more economical to have you in a warded cell than to keep mixing up magebane, but that wouldn't be up to me. I'm afraid your poetry will have to be directed toward Flint, should it come about."

A pouty smile follows, and Benedict rolls his eyes. "He wouldn't appreciate it," he mutters, feigning a sulk, "uncultured ginger. None of them appreciate my wit."

Keeping with the playful tone: "What wit?"

It's like flipping a switch: Bene is immediately, genuinely incredulous.

Colin resists his natural urge to apologize this time, keeping a lighthearted look as he pokes at him through the bars.

"Go on. Fire back."

It takes him a moment, but eventually Benedict's eyes light up again.

"Colin, you're being mean to me!" he gasps, in what sounds like wonderment.

"It's called taking the piss," Colin states for the record, grinning broadly.

"And here I didn't think you had it in you." Bene shifts so that he's facing the bars, gripping one of them casually. "Perhaps there's hope for you after all."

"Hope for me?" Colin says in mock astonishment. "You sit there weaving a curtain out of hay and you tell me there's hope for me?"

Edited 2020-01-17 17:44 (UTC)

Bene's astonishment in return is real. "It worked though!" he exclaims, and a strange lightness seems to come into his face; he may as well have been wearing a button reading Ask Me About My Windowscreen, but Colin is the first person to have actually mentioned it.

"I've never made anything like that before," he continues, "and it works! And it fits! ...getting a bit grimy, though." He glances back over his shoulder to survey it.

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