Down On Skid Row [Closed-ish]

[sulahnan]

WHO: Athessa, Byerly
WHAT: Repairing friendship maybe??
WHEN: a few days after By's backfired apology (pre-Ghislain)
WHERE: Lowtown
NOTES: Drinking and drug use and probably violence, threadjacking negotiable

Lowtown taverns haven't been Athessa's regular haunts for a long while, probably because she tacitly conceded them to Derrica in favor of drifting along the battlements in clouds of smoke and visiting Hightown apartments where the food is arguably much better. But she's here now, leaning against the bar and trying valiantly to get the barkeep's attention. This isn't the one who passes her information for Riftwatch, just an unaffiliated one who has something against elves, or women, or short-arses, or all of the above.

So while she waits, she produces a blunt and lights it on someone else's match just after they light their own cigarette. It's surprising enough for the man that he stares, confused, until the flame burns down to his fingers and he drops the match and stomps it out when it hits the floor.

"Cheers," Athessa says, though he's already ignoring her again, just like the barkeep. She turns and leans her elbows on the bar, scanning the crowd for anyone pretty, handsome, pretty handsome, or pretty interesting.

Comments

[bouchonne]

A casual shrug. "Still counts. Whatever you need to do to win."

[sulahnan]

She also shrugs. "So what do I win?"

[bouchonne]

"Oh, nothing from me." He smiles crookedly. "Don't you know that I'm far too impoverished to have anything to offer?"

[sulahnan]

"I'll accept an IOU."

[bouchonne]

"I'll always be impoverished. It'll do you no good."

[sulahnan]

"Maybe not but it's satisfying to be able to say you owe me at some convenient moment in the future."

Athessa stands and brushes the alley grit off her trousers and once reasonably grit-free she extends a hand to help Byerly to his feet. Old and frail as he is, he might need the assistance.

[bouchonne]

He's not proud. Quite the opposite. He takes it and makes a great show of struggling up to his feet, pretending to be dreadfully feeble, leaning all his weight on her.

[sulahnan]

His full weight leaning on her is not what she expected and she lets out a little squawk before properly bracing herself against his lean.

"Okay, old man, up ya get," She claps him on the back and pulls Byerly's arm over her shoulder to fully commit to the bit. "Was there a plan for learning me the shell game or should I just drag you back to your home for feeble lords?"

[bouchonne]

"You're welcome to do with it what you will," he says with a shrug. "Make some money tonight. Or just be unimpressed with the obvious simplicity of it. As you will."

[sulahnan]

She scoffs lightly and starts them towards the street again.

"What would I need money for?"

[bouchonne]

"A few months of Bard training and she fancies herself an Orlesian comtesse," he says to no one in particular.

[sulahnan]

"Maybe I'm just independently wealthy."

[bouchonne]

"Are you? Maybe I should start being kinder to you."

[sulahnan]

"How else would I have afforded that case of wine?"

[bouchonne]

"By having money the normal way, I suppose."

[sulahnan]

She shrugs, sort of. More of a shift of the lay of his arm.

"Or maybe I won a pineapple in a game of poker and traded that for the wine and I'm actually very poor. Who can say?"

[bouchonne]

"That seems more likely."

He looks at her a moment, then. And then he says, "Most people are a bit curious, why a well-bred fellow like me knows these tricks."

[sulahnan]

"Do you want me to be most people?" She asks, looking sidelong at him with a wry twist to her brow. Knowing what she knows about him, and not knowing fuck-all about being well-bred, it doesn't seem like any big mystery why he'd know such tricks.

[bouchonne]

His shrug in return is casual. But he replies, "I think that everyone would like other people to show an interest in them, no?"

[sulahnan]

Sometimes, is the dismissive thing she could say, as someone who regularly finds herself wanting to disappear. So instead, she asks:

"What was your favorite game to play when you were younger?"

[bouchonne]

A cocked eyebrow. What a way to go about it.

"Is that what interests you most about me? My history of gamesmanship?"

[sulahnan]

"No," simply put. "I wanna know what games you liked, and why you liked them. Whether it was about winning, or just having fun, or if you only learned to play because someone important liked the game, and you wanted to catch their eye."

[bouchonne]

Well, since she seems sincere enough... "When I was old enough to care about seeming sophisticated, Wicked Grace. Which I played very badly. The lying always came naturally to me, but numbers have always given me quite a lot of trouble, ever since I was a child. Before that point, my favorite was having someone give me a line of music and seeing if I could replicate it perfectly, which is a game without a name, but which pompous children have been playing for centuries, methinks."

[sulahnan]

"On the violin?" She is sincere, which feels more vulnerable than sharing the pain from her own past. It's hard to explain why. Perhaps it's along the same lines as why that shared nightmare of Bastien betraying her to the enemy cut so deeply. "Has it always been that, or do you play other instruments, too?"

[bouchonne]

A shrug. "Pianoforte a bit. Cello a bit, though not so well as Bastien. The oboe, though there I am but mediocre. The melodeon. I sing tolerably well. Violin is my best, though."

A shrug. "Music is one of my few real talents."