faderift | OPEN LOG: A beach party.

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OPEN LOG: A beach party.

WHO: Everyone.
WHAT: A beach party.
WHEN: On a very hot day. At some point during the month.
WHERE: A beach just outside of Kirkwall.
NOTES: It is a beach party.

During a particularly hot and oppressive week in Kingsway, the Diplomacy division announces it will be diverting some of its funds to organize a party on a nearby beach. Kirkwallers are invited as well - a relationship-building sort of effort - but the party is mostly intended for morale boosting for Riftwatch itself.

The party features the following:

Transportation to this lovely beach from the Gallows and from Kirkwall.

Sunbathing and swimming in skimpy (or non-skimpy, if you're a fuckin square) bathing suits.

Live music and dancing.

Delectable grilled meats (and some vegetables, if you're a fuckin square).

Rum drinks served in hollowed-out fruits.

A sandcastle-building competition.

A swim race.

A few fun little sailboats bobbing around out on the water.

Does all that sound too wholesome? Great! There's also a cave system in the cliffs next to the beach. These little grottos are full of nooks and crannies and are perfect for a bit of sinful action after dark; in one cavern, there'll be some gambling games where some of Kirkwall's citizens are losing money; in another, you're likely to run into people making out.

Have fun! Soak up sun! Don't get in trouble! Or do, whatever, it's a beach party.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

That this was her play makes it easier to yield to the inevitability of exactly how intimately they’re about to be acquainted. Richard relents out of arm’s length resistance at her mugging, resetting his hold to draw her into him instead as she wraps around, with just enough of a leer to suggest he sincerely doubts she is sorry.

He’s so layered up for this beach party that there flat out isn’t much space to get at him, the collar of his jacket snug nearly to the jut of his ears, and vest and tunic beneath.

But he still leans to kiss her, last second hesitation scoffed out short and sharp with wine before he noses in and girds to really 0-60 snog into it. Committed to the bit, his free hand quickly anchored against the wall past her for dramatic leverage.

Yes, well. As any good actor will likely attest, dramatics hardly require the accessibility one might desire in reality. Not that she is a performer of any kind, mind; merely that she and Bastien have seen more than enough of the Kirkwall theatre scene for her to have developed some choice opinions on the subject. For example, ordinarily a leg might be hooked somewhere inviting and in such a way as to flash a suggestive bit of thigh to any viewer, but in truth her own beach wear is less delicate and breezy than it appears. So Fitcher valiantly makes do with rucking her fingers up into the back of his hair and some exaggerated swooning under the force of Richard's mouth as those footfalls seem to draw— nearer? Or pass? Or—

No. Their pursuit is definitely just there, and slowing.

One of Fitcher's arms unravels to find her passionate suitor's spare hand so it might be placed very firmly under the fabric draped at the small of her back where a rather generous knife is living.

Edited 2020-09-24 19:35 (UTC)

There’s a flush of heat in his breath on her neck when his hand finds the grip, concentrated effort kicked loose into nastier scandal. He skips over betrayal straight to incredulity -- and ill-advised but deeply genuine interest -- in a glance.

Are they. Going to murder her debtor?

O, Mr. Bond.

He twists the blade free, and delves in again, rasping under her throat on his way to her ear, opening up her line of sight over his shoulder to the tune of a murmured, “Same placement, midline.”

If she’s interested.

Please. They are going to defend themselves if the gentleman she owes a substantial bit of coin to decides he'd rather get even some other way. Really, Richard; she is merely exercising an excess of caution about the preservation of your perfectly decent hide.

Though she is, for the record. Interested. How interesting, says the slide of her hand from his arm to his hip, to under the edge of his coat until her curious fingers find the blade waiting there.

"My, what a big—" she starts to purr while her attention, knife sharp indeed, flickers to sneak a look across his shoulder where she might scope out the proximity of the threat.

(She is, everyone will agree, extremely funny.)

And then Fitcher stops. Like a fox hearing dogs is arrested by an abrupt line of tension before spooking into the underbrush, her hands remain where they are in Richard's hair and rucked up under his coat. Rather less comically alluring by a great many degrees, she eventually says, "Why Barrow. What a charming coincidence this is."

He'd just been wandering, hazy with drink and a day of sun, and Barrow might not have even noticed the specifics of this pair-- it's not polite to look too closely-- if he hadn't been called out by name.

His languid posture tenses, lines suddenly scoring the soft mindlessness of his expression. That is her, she said hello to him.
And there's Richard.

"Charming," he manages to grunt, blood rushing to his face in a swell of outrage, humiliation, awkwardness. It's amazing he could even form one word, as he seems but made of stone.

Dick has just taken up the lobe of her ear carefully between his teeth when she stops. He catches himself; his jaws part. Tension begins to catch up under slower, steadier breaths, winding down through his wrist, loading into tendon and bone wrapped hard around the hilt of her dagger. Somewhere down there, a fine little tongue ghosts at his knuckles, curious about all the fuss.

The bristle of his chin lifts from Fitcher’s shoulder only after she’s spoken.

Red in the face, breathless, rucked, and rustled, he straightens up and half turns to see if Barrow is who he thinks it is. His eyes are inscrutable, an uncharacteristically fiery blue in the gloom while he looks at his life and his choices and the sheer mass and density of the beefsteak behind him. The hand with the dagger, he keeps out of sight at Fitcher’s back.

“Richard,” he corrects, helpfully.

It is definitely a correction, and not an introduction.

Her hands only withdraw as far from Richard's person as his half turn demands, settling at his elbow and side (with no trace of the knife she'd been amount to draw from under the gentleman's coat).

There is no reason to be embarrassed, and so she isn't. Instead, Fitcher makes a 'come here' motion with the tip of her head and some emphatic eyebrow in an effort to beckon Barrow closer and drops her voice to the level of conspiracy.

"I don't suppose you can tell us anything about the whereabouts of an especially furious looking gentleman. About so tall, with pale hair, wearing what I believe was a green vest, and potentially making threats on an innocent woman's life thanks to a certain outstanding balance she might owe to his bookkeepers? We've only just made our escape."

Eyes at first on Richard when he reiterates his name, Barrow then looks to Fitcher when she speaks again, clearly failing to see the joke. He takes one step closer, but his expression is still stony, and he looks rather disinclined to draw much nearer to either of them.

"I cannot," he confirms in a voice so quiet, steady and serious it's barely his.

Why is this knife so generous.

Richard considers his options. Most of the better ones involve attempting a conversation over the top of Barrow’s head to establish intent and desired outcomes, but he can comfortably assume that Fitcher does not speak Draconic, or Abyssal, or Elvish. With a blade flush to her back, all he can do is look to her for a hint on how worth it is for her to salvage whatever this is, and then to back Barrow.

Calculating, with just a touch of live wire warning in a steady undercurrent of tension, as cornered snakes are wont to have.

"Damn."

And so she untangles herself, slipping briefly into Richard's shadow to touch his wrist which belongs to the hand with her knife in it— she cuts him a swift glance, an imploring raised eyebrow that is just for him and a comment that is almost entirely for Barrow's benefit: "That hardly seems necessary, Richard. Our ruse has worked as intended for the time being."

Hold on to that for her for a moment, won't you?

"We should be away, then. Barrow—" She peers past an elbow or a shoulder. "I don't suppose you'd be willing to convey two nervous accountants from this place? I think we've had enough excitement for the evening."

Whatever the ruse is, it's worked well enough for him; it's fair to say Barrow is somewhat blinded, jealous fury having slammed its way into his consciousness like a bull through a red cloth.

But he would never raise a hand to her, nor to anyone else without either orders or good reason. So he nods, clenching his teeth, raising his arm to her and glancing back to Richard as if to ask if he's coming.

It might be the truth, or not. He wants to believe it is, but his stomach turns at the thought he's being had, and with this weaselly little man to boot.

Untangling comes easily -- Dick steps to yield her the space, to march out of it as she sees fit. What Barrow will see when he glances back to Richard is a rustled mongoose of a man in the shadows reeling in an oversized knife to conceal it behind his lapel, timed with cutscene precision, for his eyes only.

“If we can bypass the beachfront,” he hazards, politely, in spite of his self state -- which he has made no effort to resolve -- and the miasma of displeasure around Barrow: “I’m terribly allergic to sand.”

Just seems like a weird thing a Richard Dickerson would say. Would Fitcher really willfully be making money moves in a dank crevice with a balding accountant with a sand allergy?

"One of these tunnels must lead away from it."

She slithers past him, downright serpentine in her escape. With some very minor straightening of seams, and then she is falling in beside Barrow - or close enough to count, leading the way from this little niche with all due haste.

It would be most convenient at this stage to run into her aggrieved acquaintance so they all might agree on the nature of the incident. So naturally, her would-be debt collector makes no immediate appearance whatsoever as they slip through the tangle of caverns all spotted with indiscreet liaisons, giggling pairs of embarrassed girls fleeing from one cavern to the next with their amorous suitors in pursuit, and so on and so forth. This whole business is better sport for younger people.

Though she makes some show of it - pausing at various intervals and curves in the tunnels so she might peer around the corner in an effort to least appear to be avoiding running directly into a metaphorically ready knife.

He would have gone on walking and faced the roiling sea of displeasure within alone, but instead here he is, like a schmuck, escorting them out from their little tryst while Fitcher pretends to look for someone else, while Dick--

--well okay, what was with the knife? He'll come back to that when he's calmed down--

--Dick did whatever he was doing, is doing. Maybe there are no creditors at all, maybe he just escorted her to a tavern and made nice with the innkeeper while she made her way down another man's throat, practically right in front of him, but he was too stupid--

--since when has he cared about faithfulness anyway, in these matters, when isn't it all fun and games anyway? But if he gets slapped for it, it's not like he's going to slap her, but the hypocrisy is there--

he might as well be a golem for how mechanically he's making his way along beside her, not even bothering to check when she does. If someone actually does take a chance, they might find themselves punched through a wall before he even realizes what's happening.

Richard trails along in their wake, quickening his step off beat every now and again to keep pace. He’s less concerned about the creditors, but they aren’t his creditors, and he has plenty to keep himself busy with, just getting his shirt tail tucked in and his collar(s) straight.

Barrow didn’t seem as large before as he does now.

He secrets Fitcher’s dagger more deeply away on his person given pause to do so while she’s peering around a corner, and marks again Barrow’s size, the tension bulled in his big shoulders, clenched moody in his ass. He has the look of a man operating on a hair trigger.

Dick approaches silently, from the opposite flank he was on previously, and reaches to clap a hand on Barrow’s shoulder from behind -- surprise touch from a surprise direction.

Ostensibly, he could be reaching to thank him for his understanding. In practice, he expects he might be about to take an unscheduled nap.

Edited (redundANT) 2020-09-25 08:35 (UTC)

The jolt Barrow gives will be alarming, to be sure-- he turns quickly, fists balled, but stays his hand when he sees who it is.

"What," he growls, shame flickering over his face, perhaps for how close he was to decking someone.

The resounding depth of the growl prompts Fitcher, two steps ahead of them (literally and figuratively, would be the preference) to pause in a pool of light from one of the silly colored torches lighting the various winding pathways out of the caverns. It does very little to illuminate her - dark eyes and dark hair, shadow pitched deep under her cheek -, but has a way of highlighting her raised eyebrows and the ribbon of exasperation that plays briefly in her face.

Honestly.

"Jumpy, are we? Come along lads; time is money."

With a tip of the head and a certain eagerness to escape whatever might be brewing behind Barrow's sullen look, Fitcher proceeds boldly around the next bend.

Richard quails back from Barrow rounding on him, and shrinks further still at his growl, drawing into himself with both hands raised. Wary. Unnerved.

“It’s not important,” he decides, after Fitcher has spoken.

“I’ll find my own way out.”

It makes no difference to Barrow whether Dick joins them or not-- the sooner he goes away, the sooner the question of what the fuck can properly arise.

He continues to follow Fitcher, putting the other man out of his mind for now.

There is an urge to see that Richard stay with them. He has her knife, for one; the longer he is in their company, the longer she can avoid the very obvious confrontation waiting for Barrow's teeth to unclench. But logically speaking—

She pauses, hesitating for a split second in which her attention skirts to the knife then back to Richard's face before making the simple assertion that, "Best you do. My friend won't have any reason to recognize you."

With a look to Barrow to confirm he means to follow regardless, she sweeps down one leg of a the branching passage. The knife can be fetched at some later hour when the need for explanation is rather less thick on the ground.

Watchful as he is of Barrow’s turned back, Dick is fleet enough to skirt an inscrutable glance past him to Fitcher at her blessing. He probably doesn’t intend to gamble her knife away the instant he’s free of their scrutiny, but for just that one brief moment, it’s very difficult to tell.

“I’m counting on it,” he agrees, by way of farewell.

And he’s off, receding a ways down the passage from whence they came before he picks up into a more business-like clip in search of said friend.

They're alone, or at least Dickless [sorry], not that that means any clarity is going to be provided in the meantime. Casting a meaningful glance Fitcher's way as they traipse along, Barrow has no intention of leaving her behind-- even if there weren't previous involvement, it's the right thing to do, making sure she's safe-- but even if his anger is beginning to calm, it's being replaced by a stern and uncharacteristic coolness.

The chill, she decides, is a pleasant surprise (never mind that she isn't dressed for the cold). It affords her the ability to say very little as they wind their way through a series of the cavern's back passageways, interrupted only here and there by giggling passers by or by taking a wrong turn into alcoves where their presence as interlopers is evidently unwelcome.

It's only after a few minutes of less than comfortable non-conversation, with whatever prickle of uneasiness that had once lived between her shoulder blades long faded, that Fitcher affords him, "The Ambassador certainly knows how to throw a party. I'll give him that much."

She gets little but a grunt in return. It was a good party, wasn't it? And then this happened, which renders the rest of it a worthless waste of time, as far as Barrow's concerned.

It occurs to him that he's quite afraid he won't know what to say if he opens his mouth, or that he'll say far too much of anything and none of it will be kind, so he chooses instead to be silent and stony as they both bide their time.

He deserves an apology, doesn't he? Doesn't he? Perhaps there's still time for Fitcher to acknowledge the elephant in the room.

And maybe had they been left to their lonesome as they wound their way out of the caverns, she would have. However, for better or worse it takes only a few sedate turns before the chilly silence is broken by a rather less apologetic—

"You."

Standing in the crossroads before them, breathing hard and very red in the face, is a pale haired man about yea wearing a green vest.

Fitcher freezes mid-stride like a woman caught in a comedy act.

"You are admirably persistent, Arvil." Which would be a very good line were it delivered with a knife to back it up. Alas.

Perhaps unaware of the sizeable backup she's picked up (this being a somewhat dark section of tunnel), the man lunges toward her.

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