faderift | OPEN

WHO: Dick
WHAT: Dick.
WHEN: Guardian
WHERE: The Gallows/Kirkwall
NOTES: Brackets or prose ok, wildcard ok. Other starters maybe later who knows what could happen.

The Gallows

A sharp intake of breath, pupils blown out in freefall panic that quickly pins into blearier confusion, Richard Dickerson jolts awake where he’s sat. Sometimes he reaches for his hip, sometimes he flinches blind to jostle an empty glass, or knocks the book at his knee to the floor.

In the library, in the chantry, in the baths, in any seldom-used nook or cranny between the towers after hours, he might be found dozing and nudged or shaken or spooked by instinct at the proximity of another living creature’s presence.

Lowtown

In a Lowtown tavern, he’s being hefted off a table by the shoulder, levered to his feet to have his satchel shoved into his arms.

A gossamer thread of drool keeps him tied to the surface for a moment after he’s upright. There might be blood spindling through it if his nap was unscheduled at the end of a sucker punch at some smart remark. Or maybe it’s clear -- maybe it’s just past closing time and he doesn’t have to go home, but he can’t stay here.

Regardless, he cuts a distinct figure at a distance -- long legs and beak and beard and the shaggy ruff of his cloak, which will serve him well in the snow outside.

Kirkwall/The Gallows

On business in the streets of Kirkwall, or in the hallways between spaces within the Gallows, his reluctance to engage in anything but the most cursory of conversation is clear: he keeps odd hours and waits behind blind corners for approaching footsteps to carry on past.

This is especially true of ferry trips and mealtimes, when he must watch from afar to see that the boat is likely to stay empty, or snake in and skim off the scraps left over -- cold eggs, lukewarm dregs of stew. He’s not picky, so long as he doesn’t have to make small talk.

He’s always been this way, but now more than ever, there’s a clockwork regularity to his comings and goings that makes him easier to find than he’d like for anyone who’s looking.

Wildcard

Choose your own adventure -- check in w/me about meetings arranged or requested IC, as he is likely to be rude or otherwise strange about them for the foreseeable future.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Jone is not the cleverest or most keen, and she'll tell you that loudly and with great enthusiasm, given the opportunity. It's relatively always true; Jone is no genius, but a blunt and bullheaded seeker of, at the best of times, basic information. Once she has a subject, she'll pursue it.

This is all to say that she's been watching Si for the last few days, and isn't fucking thrilled. When she sees the opportunity to get a minute alone with him (in her mind, the word cornered flashes up, unbidden), she takes it. He's on the boat, it's sailing away, but before it can get too far, Jone makes a long-legged jump over the water.

She makes it in, of course, but not without a literal fucking splash.

Dick is on his feet at the surge of motion that is Jone in his periphery, viper quick, one hand already at his belt -- paused in bafflement upon recognition.

???

Then she hits the boat.

He is dumped backwards over the bench he’d been seated on, into the meltwater and salt sloshing dark around the ferry floor. Scrambling upright again is a necessary struggle, lest he suffocate in the wet and cold -- he folds over himself, elbows and knees and a gloved hand clawing him back up onto the bench seat. He is (as yet) too dumb with shock to be cross.

Nothing in Jone's sociological makeup exists to keep her from cackling when someone falls down.

She reaches down to drag Si up, neither gentle nor particularly rough. She doesn't mean to be rough, so she isn't, but gentleness isn't a default, nor something she's particularly fluent in to begin with. She wipes some of the worst smudges of dirt from his face, or tries to, with the edge of an over-long sleeve.

"Andraste Almighty, Si, the sea does not love you."

His cloak took the worst of it, wrapped around his shoulders now like a wet dog, with fur caked and spined -- easy enough to grab him by the scuff while he scrambles, and dump him (not particularly roughly) back on his bench. He sits there for a moment, hollow-eyed, rattled, before he reaches up to deflect her wiping and nods his thanks for the assistance.

He can preen himself, thank you. And he does, smoothing lapels, tugging cuffs. Any sea grit or mud he’ll have to contend with once he’s ashore.

“I can’t wait to give thanks for this later,” he says, as he works.

She lets out a rough bit of laughter, reminiscent previous of cackling, before sitting back down.

"Oh, we're feeling cheeky now, are we?"

“Mmm.” Cheeky, nettled. He radiates resentful suspicion, fur(s) rubbed the wrong way against the chilly chop of the harbour water around them. The wind is sharp and the wet is cold and whatever designs he had on this ferry ride being very lonely or quiet or reflective are dashed.

Apart from the bilge water, he is unremarkable -- outfitted for a cold day in Kirkwall with his satchel and a glimpse of beady snake eyes peering out from the tuck of his collar.

Jone can pick up keen details when she means to; a terror on the field of battle, she's a bit useless in peace. She sits back from Si, smile fixed in place, bobbing along with the surf.

"Well," she says, "wanted to ask why you look burnt and resurrected of late, but now I reckon you'd just blame me."

“I’m not sure what you mean.” About looking burnt and resurrected, about blaming her for anything. As organized as he is likely to get with the wind whipping at him, he hunkers deeper into the damp of his cloak and hoods his brow at her smile, self-serious, hollow-around the eyes.

“I take it you haven’t had any trouble sleeping.”

If he isn't sure, he's far kinder than she is-- but she knew that. It keeps Jone from lying, saying she's been untouched. More care she hasn't put in, where she can't, and doesn't know how. Gentleness, a foreign country.

"I've had me share of poor nights," she says, avoiding his eyes, and the eyes of the companion beneath his chin (she hasn't noticed him yet). "Usually find something to whale on until I'm knackered."

The little serpent under his chin is here to see what the fuss is about, needle tongue flipped at the damp under his jaw, button eyes foiled with little rings of gold. She takes her samples and slithers slowly away, dark, a glimpse of scaly hide receding under the ruff of his cloak.

Richard sighs at Jone, a different kind of disapproval subtle by virtue of his restraint.

“Not my style, I’m afraid.” Has she ever seen him hot-blooded enough to whale on anything? It’s hard to imagine.

"You've style?" It pops out of her mouth before she can think better of it. She shakes her head, trying to rid herself of the urge to bite when softness is offered, not thinking to apologize.

Look at him. He's had worse; he'll live.

"Some folk like running, or catching fish, or playing cards, reading, or having a bloody fucking snake live in their knickers. What the fuck, Si, honestly?"

...

He furrows his brow at her on a distinct delay after the gibe, as if it had a long way to travel before landing. From downtooown --

He has had worse, but he still tucks his scruffy chin down into the bilge-streaked black bristle of his cloak, as if in review of what could possibly be wrong with it, or the dark coat underneath. Black on black. His gloves are black. The furry stack of his hat is black.

The look he shoots her upon recollecting himself is reproachful. Stung.

“I have an affinity for serpents,” on the defensive sounds strangely like why are you being this way.

Jone squints a long while, trying to suss out this latest discontentment. Oh, Lord Above... "Come off it! I'm no one to speak ill of what folk wear. If it can fit under plate, it's on me, damn the color."

She reaches out with her foot, poking his a little across the boat, attempting at companionship, comfort, all those things she doesn't really know what to do, but feels she ought.

"Were expecting you to fire back, you bloody snake-charmer."

“You’re always striking,” says Richard, still ruffled but recovering, gloved hands tucked up tight to warm beneath the confines of his cloak. Humans are very vulnerable to companionable foot poking.

Even ones who barely qualify as mammalian.

“It doesn’t look as though anyone else has taken you up on your offer for revenge.”

"Don't try to chat me up, you're like me cousin. The one I don't want dead." She laughs it off like a joke, and it might be.

"Dead shocking, innit? Figured this lot were thicker."

OPEN

gallows, ferry.

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