[OPEN]

[nonvenomous]

WHO: Richard Dickerson, Ellis, YOU?
WHAT: Dirty jobs + some closed starters + catch all.
WHEN: Cloudreach
WHERE: Docks/Lowtown/Gallows/Wildcard
NOTES: Additional starters pending. Action spam and prose are both fine.

Blending in if at the Viscount’s Head Tavern

Alternatively:

Scouting with or bothering him while he’s at Any Other Tavern

Richard has brought his journal with him, as if he expected to be here alone. The fact that he isn’t here alone has not deterred him from opening it and getting to work -- short, sharp strokes of ink on the paper at the point of his quill.

The tavern is as noisy as it smells like it should be, crowded, sticky tables and the stink of salt in the air.

“What would you like to talk about?” he asks, without glancing up from his work.

This doesn’t have to be awkward. If nothing else, the rate at which they’re drinking to keep pace with the local color should see to that.


Wildcard

Throw us somewhere or HMU and we can brainstorm.

Comments

[charmoffensive]

Objectively, Loxley might think that if Richard intended him physical harm, he wouldn't bother with a supervillain reveal beforehand. Subjectively, negative wisdom modifiers don't equate to having zero subliminal instinct. As Richard low key prepares for the possibility of a sudden scramble, Loxley likewise seems to tense.

And while there's no glancing to his weapons on the table or evaluation as to whether Richard is armed, he's ignoring his own ale.

"How are we problematic for the Yuan-ti empire," is his question that is not tonally pitched like a question but is a question. "What did you tell them."

[nonvenomous]

Richard finds and turns the cork over to square it under his fingers, side to top, top to side, side to bottom. His left hand has receded from the table edge to rest lax in his lap. Were he to have a dagger on him, it’d be hard for him to get ahold of with speed. His jacket is loose, his belt is at the foot of the cot behind him. His ankles are bare.

“I didn’t ask,” sounds very stupid, for a human to say. “But I have suspicions.”

Matter-of-fact.

There is a little snake curved around the back of his neck, snuggled in beneath the flip of his collar. Occasionally the flick of its needle tongue breaches the shadows, there.

“Initially I only reported the party’s movements across Promias, with the expectation that we would proceed directly south to the temple on the Sultana’s orders. I stopped reporting after that, and was approached by an Anathema in The Cruxal who wanted to know what we were doing there.”

[charmoffensive]

"And you told the-- you told it what?"

Quicker off the mark to ask, this time, acclimatising to the new reality, if still at a remove, still a little abstracted. There is impatience for what he doesn't yet know, which apparently, is a fuckload!, including what questions are best to ask. So Loxley presses the story to continue and maintains eye contact.

Well. He glances at the snake.

[nonvenomous]

“I told her we were researching the temple dragon so that we’d be better equipped to slay it.”

Easy question.

He stops his cork on its edge mid-turn, and waits for the next one.

[charmoffensive]

Now there's a silence, Loxley staring at the other man across the table. Slowly does it, his hand reaches for his ale, and he says, "And fortunately, you're a good liar."

He swallows some ale. He doesn't appear to enjoy it very much.

[nonvenomous]

Richard's smile for that is thin, tired lines pulled tight at the corners of his eyes. Still. There’s an affable slant to his brows that betrays tolerance rooted in affection -- more often it’s a sentiment reserved for Loxley’s reluctance to steal, or proclivity for taking jobs that sound chivalrous but don’t pay well.

Here it might be a little condescending, if not outright poisonous.

“Most of us are.” Goes with the territory. “It was borderline miraculous that I survived."

[charmoffensive]

Loxley isn't smiling, all simmering distrust across the table. Being not entirely stupid, he can process the implications laced in Richard's words. The absence of reporting. The lying, allegedly at great personal cost.

It also annoys him that he believes him, strangely. Like that amount of trust is what betrayed him in the first place.

And so, in turn, he is slow to trust that instinct.

"You're telling me now," he says, "here. Where it doesn't matter."

[nonvenomous]

The smile fades, slowly and naturally under the weight of the subject matter. There’s nothing for him to gloat over. Frankly the level of cowardice on display here is staggering: all of this ceased to matter months ago.

Shame, sorrow or reflection should all drive his gaze down, or away.

He stays on target, the cork rolled up over his thumb.

“Yes.”

[charmoffensive]

If Loxley still had a tail, it'd be lashing to and fro.

Great. Good. As long as we're agreed. It also means that any urgent questions he might have had, with regards to their mission, their party members, dragons and impending doom, are disappearing into obscurity, if not yet all the way gone. If they get back home with all memories intact, then perhaps he can ask them there.

It feels desperately unlikely. Tonight, anyway.

"Why?"

Because mattering is a two way street.

[nonvenomous]

In isolation like this and without any daggers in play, Richard explores the luxury of not needing to answer immediately. The snake gathered up under his collar has grown very still, her tail snuggled in tight and her tongue stowed.

“Because I don’t want to lie to you about it anymore.”

This feels true. Or at least, earnest.

But there’s a glimpse of something more shrewdly mathematical in a slanting glance aside, between thoughts. He is confident that Loxley won’t leave, or make an announcement about his trustworthiness.

“It might not surprise you to learn that I haven’t had many friends.”

[charmoffensive]

Unhappiness settles sullen along Loxley's narrow shoulders and it's likely a testament to the vital span of months and weeks they've spent together, in and out of Thedas, that he refrains from rolling his eyes. Or a number of other more proportionate, more passionate reactions available to him.

He drinks from his ale again, and sets it back down.

"I was christened 'Chivalry'," he volunteers, apropos of being unable to pick another thing to say out of all the competing things to say. There's a little bit of whimsy in the impulse to share, given the circumstance, but that leaves his tone quickly enough. "Chiv, for short. I didn't know what the long version meant, when I was small, and I asked one of the minders about it."

He tips his cup a little in gesture. He hasn't actually looked up, since looking down. "I think she tried to explain, but I mustn't have grasped it, because she had me read these stories instead, about this-- ever so dashing prince who would disguise himself and mingle around the common folk, doing good things, saving lives, and such. I suppose you could say it left an impression, although there are times it feels a little like a bad joke.

"Do you wish to be called Zseiless?"

[nonvenomous]

It’s Richard’s turn to drink, through Loxley’s unhappiness and through his story, ale swallowed down in a bolt that will take too long to bleed through his system. Sobriety was the safer -- if exponentially more uncomfortable -- bet, and even as he drinks, he’s keeping a weather eye.

Something recedes behind it at the question, the octopus press of his engagement peeling itself carefully back off the porthole glass. The pause it gives him is distinct. Also brief.

“A challenging name to live up to,” he says.

“It suits you.”

Reassuring. He takes another drink, little left to swirl in the bottom. There is unfulfilled momentum subtle in its tilt away from the table -- trace evidence of an attempted departure controlled and aborted very early in its inception.

“You can call me Richard. It’s what I deserve.” There’s the smile again. Please release him.

[charmoffensive]

Loxley mirrors Richard on a delay but down the rest of his ale in doing so, a couple of gulps of borderline too-bitter liquid that has him grimacing by the time he's done. Where is usually neutral to glad for flattery, he seems to lean back from it now, gaze averted and wandering off.

For the same reason, he doesn't seek out answers to questions like, 'would you have told us, eventually?' He doesn't want to hear it, when it's not going to help anything.

"Is there anything else I should know?"

[nonvenomous]

The ghost of Dick’s smile fades -- not at Loxley’s averted gaze, but at the question that follows it.

There is so much. He watches Loxley watch the rest of their shared quarters.

“Yes.” Obviously. “Nothing so terrible,” he decides on his own, weighing out what he knows against logic for lack of any other outside input. Nothing they have to discuss now. Nothing that can’t wait. Although:

“I have it on decent authority that Ashey Pelt might like daisies gathered in the wild.”

Deep disappointment and avoidance or no, Richard looks meaningfully to Loxley before he reaches to plug the cork firmly down into the ale bottle. From there, he turns and stands to resume his bedtime routine. Jacket shed, candles snuffed.

[charmoffensive]

That little piece of intelligence is enough to gain back Loxley's attention -- less so for the content itself so much as mild surprise that Richard thought to share it at all. And then he watches Richard get ready for bed and unease settles in him. Less out of a true worry that he would wake up with a knife to his throat (or fail to wake up at all) and more just.

A visceral dislike at the notion of lying awake in the dark, stewing in as yet unasked questions, hurt feelings, and so on and so forth. Definitely not sleeping any time soon.

He stands up, and takes up the bottle of firmly closed ale.

"I'm going for a walk," he announces. It's not a lie. That's exactly as far as he's planned as to what he will do once he's out the door. There is the dim thought he might write down a list of questions so he doesn't accidentally forget them the next time they talk and he becomes angered at any point, but.

The night is young.

[nonvenomous]

Richard looks back at the sound of the bottle leaving the table -- too natural a progression to evoke surprise. He drops the dead weight of his jacket over the back of his desk chair and nods, acknowledgement well short of permission. He’s not that bold.

But the night isn’t that young, either.

Anything he could say about safety would sound contrite; he leaves it at silence and a lingering look, waiting for Loxley to cross the threshold into the hallway to sweep a glance around their shared quarters.

This is probably fine.

[charmoffensive]

Loxley leaves. He leaves behind his weapons, the tangle of rapier and daggers lying a little carelessly on the table as opposed to securely stowed into the chest at the end of his bed, or within arms reach just beneath it. He leaves behind his coat, too, with its leather panels and battle scars.

The night isn't that young and there are no ferries out from the Gallows for the rest of the evening, so it'd be hard for Loxley to get into an excess of trouble.

The door is closed, and stays that way until the morning.