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WHO: Tony Stark, Loxley, Marcus Rowntree, and your fine selves.
WHAT: Tony works a forge, Marcus trains, and Loxley invents sunbathing.
WHEN: Covers off Solace.
WHERE: Around and about.
NOTES: Probably just a couple replies per prompt would make my life easier. Select the man of your choosing. Feel free to convert to action spam style tagging, I don't mind nor care. If there is something specific you want to do, let's wait a week, big AC-related wink, or hit me up in inboxes!

tony stark;

Clang. Clang. Clang.

These are the familiar sounds coming from the smithy, where it is almost unbearably hot. The air tastes of smoke and metal, thick with the occasional cloud of steam. The forge is burning with colours of bright white and yellow rather than gold at what Tony approximates to be probably 2800 F, maybe hotter. It's at his back with his attention paid forwards at the anvil, on which he rests a glowing-hot length of metal held secure in tongs in one gloved hand. The other hand wields a hammer, bringing it down onto soft metal with almost trance-like consistency. Embers spark and catch on his wrists, his arms, but only occasionally.

He almost looks the part. A coarse leather apron drapes down from his waist, and he's wearing a sleeveless jerkin of similar material, keeping arms exposed to the warm, fire-flecked air. The stand out difference would be the goggles he has fashioned himself at some point -- round, tinted lenses, secured with a strap. He flips whatever he's making around as the heat begins to leech from the iron, and Tony Stark resumes his meditative assault of hammer falling upon metal. He's been doing this for a while, now, arms soot-streaked and slick with exertion, muscles tense even where he grips firm the tongs, from wrist to shoulder.

As the iron turns from bright white to fading orange, he turns to shove the potential sword back into the furnace, and, pulling off his goggles, brings his forearm up to wipe his brow. Not necessarily in slow motion.

marcus rowntree;

It's getting late into the morning, the sun creeping towards one of its rare clear sky zeniths. Marcus Rowntree has the space mostly to himself, so it would seem, and who can blame anyone. It is hot as shite. But he has used this excuse all week not to do much of anything, and so he has summoned himself out into the training courtyard to roll through the motions of combat. Exercises, mainly, a collection of stances through which he moves his heavy, bladed staff through the air in swoops that are both powerful but controlled. Restraining the easy urge to let gravity and momentum wrest precision from him.

It's nothing they taught in the Circles. In his Circle, anyway. He came to all of this quite late.

Anyway he is also shirtless.

And when he is done, blade hitting the ground in front of him with a flicker of fire scorching the earth, he is breathing harder than he had been before, and drops the staff into the dirt beside him, runic incisions on the metal flashing hellfire orange for a moment before dimming. He is already walking directly to the barrel of water left out for this purpose, and at first, hovers his hands over it. A glimmer of blue light dances off the murky surface, cooling the water within just a little. Marcus picks up a bucket, matter of factly submerges it into the water, and brings it back up, full, to tip over his head, flicking wet hair out of his face as he does so.

loxley;

But all of that sounds like a lot of work, doesn't it?

Loxley is opting for leisure, when he can find it, and with a natural resistance to fire, has never feared the potentially damaging effects of prolonged exposure to the sun. Back in Tassia, when his hue was a bronzed-gold, he tended to darken up quite handsomely, and he's noticed, now, the qunari grey actually has some pleasing undertones of silver when it's in a certain light. So he is reaping the benefits on a lovely afternoon, having found an area of the island coast unbothered by deckhands and ferries and the like, and, after laying out a woolen cloak he has brought along for this sole purpose, lies upon it like a lizard beneath the open sky to sun himself. Quite a few pieces of clothes have been set aside, his weaponry resting atop of it, down to just a light pair of shorts and some dark-lensed glasses that the Research academics had been developing some months ago.

He is on his belly for a while, and you'd be forgiven to think that he might just be fully asleep, until he rolls his lazy way to lie on his back, positioning an arm under his head.

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Loxley barely moves, only twisting his neck to peer up at Athessa from his prone position, arm bent back under his head, smile automatic. He acknowledges where his weaponry lies with a glance as he parries, "Mourn my passing, by the sounds of it."

Now he reaches to his face to tug the glasses down enough to peer at her over them and up at her.

"Haven't seen you in a bit. What's that you have?"

"Mm," she nods and crosses to his other side to arrange the blanket she brought to lay on. "Been on mission in Orlais. We had to be undercover for a while."

With a little sigh she sits herself down beside him and addresses what she assumes he was referring to: the blunt roll of elfroot she only planned to smoke half of. How convenient.

"Elfroot," she says, and offers it to him to hold while she kicks off her sandals. "It makes everything feel nicer."

"Including whatever you've done to yourself, I'd wager?" he says, with a nod at her that's meant to indicate the bandaging.

But Loxley is rolling to lie on his side, propped up on his elbow. Now his back is to his weapons and everything. Hopefully Athessa isn't one half of a murder attempt or something. He takes the joint, rolling it between his fingers as she settles.

"That sounds very exciting. Undercover in Orlais. You ought to regale me."

"Oh, very exciting, undercover as a servant," she says and rolls her eyes. Her fingers take a detour on their way to retrieve a match she managed to find to gingerly prod at her cheek. "It's one of the only roles I can have in Orlais thanks to the ears. Oh, don't worry, I didn't get this while pretending to be a servant, this one has an exciting story." A disclaimer, in case he might've thought it was something awful like being beaten for being an elf.

The match is one used to light the fireplaces in the Gallows, far longer than necessary for Athessa's purposes, so she uses the dagger on her hip to first cut it shorter, then begin to split it from wood to tip to turn one match into two.

"Three of us on reconnaissance, three on infiltration and recovery. A magic artifact. But: something went wrong," The match splits clean. "The infiltration team got captured, subjected to torture, so the rest of us have to hatch a plan--" She strikes the match, then plucks the blunt out of his fingers like she's airlifting it. "--get them and the artifact out before the Venatori find out too much or they kill our friends," The match breathes life into a fresh, glowing cherry, then shakes the flame out, leaving smoke trails in the air. "And get out without a trace."

Loxley was quite serious in his invitation to be regaled, because he listens intently, with the same interest of someone who likes a story.

"Is it that last part that got fucked?" he asks. His tone is light, but not so jaunty that he sounds like he's making fun out of a job where people were tortured. Just several degrees removed and feeling around the edges. "It usually is, with a group."

"Nah, it was them getting caught that was fucked," she says, "All things considered, we got away light. Artifact retrieved, prisoners saved, anyone who could trace the work back to us was silenced. This--"

Athessa fills her lungs with smoke and gestures to her face and bruises. Passes the lit blunt back to Loxley, should he want to partake. When she lets the smoke out, it's through her nostrils in deeply cool draconic fashion. "--is from ensuring our getaway was clean. I had to fight a magister's bodyguard who thought the person I was pretending to be had potential. He seemed really disappointed that I was escaping, gave me this to remember him by, and then Nell exploded a wall onto him and bruised my shoulder a bit."

Ah, but she has a dress code she's not meeting. While her hands are free she pulls her shirt off and sets it aside, roughly equidistant from herself as Loxley's affects are to him. The dagger and everything else join the shirt until all she has on is a bandeau and shorts. Much better. Now she can lay back and lounge with an arm behind her head. The unbruised one, of course.

Loxley takes the joint, studies it, then breathes from it as she did. It's not the first time he's smoked, but he still goes a little cautiously with it, like perhaps the first time he smoked, it wasn't quite so smooth. But he does indulge in a quick second hit before he offers it back to her.

Once she's properly dressed down, anyway, which gets a crooked smile and a look over as he says, "Not bad. The adventure, I mean.

"You could fancy it up a bit, though. Build some tension."

Athessa hums her agreement. "Could do. I have to think about what details I have to change for integrity's sake, and how to address the torture without it being--" What's the word, says the wave of her hand. "--distasteful.

"I definitely wouldn't want to neglect details like overpowering the guard captain with my thighs around her neck, orrrr taking on the magister armed with nothing but a filet knife."

He grins at her, and says, "No, definitely not. In fact, I'm going to have to insist you show me the thigh maneuver later on."

Torture shmorture. At least while they're sunning themselves like delinquents on a beach, sharing a blunt, luxuriating. He can feel a little bad about making light of things later. For now--

"As the gentleman wishes," she agrees with a waggle of her brows. A hand is lifted, first to shade her eyes from the sun, then to reach over and delicately take the sunglasses from his face and put them on herself with a cheeky grin.

"Though for your sake, I'll demonstrate without snapping your neck."

Loxley lifts his chin to assist in the removal of his sunglasses, squinting briefly against the light before relaxing. He says, "Good. I'd make it worth your while."

It's a good thing she's as bad as him, if not worse. He still feels moved to nudge the conversation somewhere a little less playful, and says, "I'm glad you made it out with naught but a scratch. You're going to reward yourself with some downtime, I hope."

Oh, she has no doubt such a silver-tongued devil would drive her absolutely insane with his head between her thighs. His nudge rolls her over to face him, the wattage of her grin dimmed down low into a fond smile.

"Some, but not much," is the honest answer. Colin said it'd take about a week for the bruises to heal, perhaps longer for the more lasting souvenir on her face. But compared to Poesia and Barrow and Derrica, she may as well be pristine. "A few days, if I don't get too restless. I'd rather ensure that the others aren't pushing themselves."

"Then you should lead by example," Loxley says. "Maybe at least wait until some sort of unavoidable disaster strikes. It's so lovely, this weather."

Says he, when most complain of the heat, the humidity, the way the city takes on a certain stink at high noon. But he doesn't seem to be kidding. "Kirkwall reminds me so much of where I grew up, you know, when it's like this. Less so when it's all ice and bullshit."

He's just so... charming. In a manner disparate from witty repartee and teasing. Athessa has thought before about the easy confidence Loxley has about him; how his strength is softly defined. He's alluring: a man of interest, not just an object of lust.

"I'd like to hear more about where you grew up," she says. "About you."

And of course she might identify some minor crack in aforementioned confidence in the same moment, and Loxley half-laughs, and reaches out a hand to take back the joint for his own use. Still. It's the gentle way she says it that moves him more than the dithering he might have about ignoble histories.

"It gets sad and boring before it gets fun," he warns, letting smoke ease out of his lungs between words. "But Otho, the city, I've fondness for. It's a big port town like this one, lots of trade, lots of-- well, opportunity, if you've an eye for it." He shifts his attention towards where they can see the rise of Kirkwall across the water, the ships sitting fat in the bay.

He adds, "Not quite so many humans, more of a mix. Elves, half-elves, dwarves, halflings. And at least one tiefling that I know about. Probably more that I don't. It's been a long time, since I've been. I was hired aboard a ship just like one of those out there, and didn't look back."

Sad and boring are old friends of hers, and she's prepared to trade sorrow for sorrow if he wants to barter. She too hopped aboard a ship with the intention of never looking back.

"How old were you? When you left."

"Fourteen, I think. I wasn't counting."

In normal circumstances, there is less ease in talking of his history, more finessing the subject away from himself. But there is something in being here that feels as though if he doesn't speak to it, it may as well have never existed -- which, once, he thought would have been a good deal.

But if pushed, he'd attribute his willing to Athessa herself. Knowing she would likely volunteer similar information, and that he'd like to know it too.

"I had this notion that ships could go anywhere, but to be honest, I haven't much instinct for sailing. And it's a lot of hard work, really."

"Me neither," she says with a knowing smile. "When I was seventeen I scraped together what I could to hop on a ship and leave Kirkwall far, far behind me. Spent most of that voyage chumming the waters with my meals."

A fair amount of time on that boat had also been spent drunk below decks, but that's hardly noteworthy. "I had silly dreams of becoming a pirate in Rivain, but they didn't make it to the dock."

"Truly?" he says, with a mirrored smile back at her. "Well, seventeen-year-old Athessa can rest assured that piracy is not quite all its cracked up to be. The silly dreams are much better than what it's actually like."

Loxley splays his hands. Tada. "I did a few tours under some captains of ill repute. When it wasn't dreadfully dull, it was violent and confusing, and I never made half the money I imagined I'd make. So I went on to adventuring, which-- is much the same, really, but the money is a lot better, as is the company.

"I don't know that I knew you were-- from Kirkwall?"

"Not originally," she amends, "I was born in the Singing Woods of the Free Marches. My clan would pass by the city from time to time for trade, so when I lost them I knew to come here."

Careful choice of words there. She lost them; she didn't get lost.

It's a choice of words that isn't lost on Loxley, and keen interest dulls a little -- not in an absence of interest so much as recognition of something painful, probably. A safe enough bet that he says, "I'm sorry," as an easy offering.

He knows a little of the elven plight, so different from that of his own world. He's met enough of them and shared stories over drinks, although all of them have been city born, but all the same.

"It's not a particularly easy city to be welcomed by. Easier to grow up amongst it all."

It is, by virtue of the passage of time, a pain that has faded and exists as a bittersweet remembrance. On impulse, Athessa reaches over to brush a dark lock of his hair aside with her fingertips. An easy, mindless display of affection.

"I doubt anyone expects any different from The City of Chains," she agrees. "Except maybe a thirteen-year-old elf, I guess. I had to learn fast that it wasn't safe to be on the streets at night, when other people who looked like me were expected to be in Alienages.

"Do you miss Otho? I mean, I expect you miss home, like anyone would, but —"

It's nice, that sort of thing. Being touched, being asked about, being cared for, even in the most minor of ways. It all jars rather painfully against the subject at hand, Athessa's particular choices in phrasing, but not too terribly.

"It's complicated," he says, not without a twist of humour in his tone, before offering more seriously; "I had something of a rough start. I grew up in this-- I don't know, mostly an orphanage, but more than that. My father was alive and kicking, you see, but he did so in a workhouse to pay off his debts, and-- it was so long ago, and I was too young to know what was happening."

He idles with some of the fine pebbles and sand between them, nails naturally a near-black shade of grey. "So the place I went to looked after children who all had their rough starts, and didn't make it much easier. We learned our letters, but mostly learned surviving. I could turn a good profit with a knife in my hand and a crowd of people with gold in their pockets by the time I was eight.

"And it went a bit like that, but I didn't hate it the whole time, you know. After I while, you fit into where you are." He adds, with a half-cocked smile, "Which is why I left to do adventure."

Athessa pushes the sunglasses up to sit on her forehead and she listens, and studies his face as he speaks. His is something of a familiar story, even without the so-called orphanage. Many of the urchins in Kirkwall are such because their parents can't afford to keep them, rather than having been orphaned and forced to fend for themselves, like Athessa herself.

"We've got that in common, too," she says, smiling. She'd like to kiss him, she thinks, but then she might not get to hear more for a while. "I didn't much like the idea of fitting in where I was before I hopped on that ship."

The elfroot haze is probably to blame for her reaching for his hand, not to hold but to splay her fingers over his and compare how much larger his hands are, and the contrast of their skin. Warm, golden brown against cool grey and silver.

Funny thing, he happens to want to kiss her. But then it would disrupt what's happening now, which is her hand gently flattening his where it plays with the sand, and he likes that differently. The contrast is rather lovely, and an unusual reminder; of the shared warm tones this picture would have boasted, back in Tassia. It is a strangely easy thing to forget.

He turns his hand under hers, palm against palm. "So if not to become a pirate in Rivain, whither did you go next?"

tries to remember my own oc's backstory

sulahnan - 2020-08-23 18:31 (UTC) - Expand

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tries to remember my own oc's backstory