OPEN

[nonvenomous]

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.

Comments

[pittance]

Glass shatters.

"Easy," He's half a step into recoil when Richard wakes. Some slow inch of expression settles for it: No recognition. He stoops to collect the fallen book, picks a stubborn shard from the spine. "Hey, you're alright."

Call the Gallows what you will, places with mages are full of little alcoves, abandoned nooks. Someone might've studied here, once. These days it's just a closet with aspirations.

"Didn't realize no one was in here."

[nonvenomous]

Richard’s recognition is delayed by adrenaline, the passing shadow of suspicion it entails separate and distinct from his instinctive fear upon waking.

Handsome dwarf.

Rolled onto his back in the blood-dyed snow, pockets still warm for rifling through by the light of fuel burning over ice. Dick scrubs the image from the back of his mind’s eye with a hard pass of his palm over his face, anchor hand uncurled for him to check the shard. The sigh he lets off upon marking the universe (Thedas) and year (9:46? 47?) reeks of wine.

The word he mutters after it is distinctly a swear, just not one in Trade.

[pittance]

"That Antivan?" It's not — sometimes you just gotta say something. Make a little noise, let a guy catch up. "Hey, hold this,"

Vance presses the book back on him, fishes for a cloth (left pocket, matches, pebble). Richard picking his own glass smells like a short trip to stitches.

"Don't think I've read that one."

[nonvenomous]

“No.”

It’s not Antivan. There is the spine of a book pressed into his hand, followed by the rustling of pockets. His brow furrows at the sound; the next sigh he vents out through his nose, deep and slow and more controlled than the first.

“You should know I was with Jone when she cut you down in the Frostbacks.” FYI.

He waits until Vance has stooped to say so, and deposits his book on the table to exchange it for his glass, only to recall that it’s shattered across the floor between them.

[pittance]

Something stiffens. A rolling petrification of shoulder, neck, sight. Half-crouched with a handful of glass, Vance looks for a moment like he must have in visions; looks angrier than that.

He breathes out. Settles the weight onto his knees, planted right in place. Richard could make a break for it. It'd just mean vaulting him like a track star for the door.

"Why the fuck'd you think I should know that?"

[nonvenomous]

“Consider it a courtesy. Perhaps next time you’ll be more prepared.”

Rude.

Dick drags one heel in to shift pressure from one butt bone to the other, sluggish in everything but his descent into indifference over what happens to him in this alcove, foggy with sleep and wine and malaise. Vance has every advantage and handful of glass shrapnel at his disposal.

“I can clean this up."

[pittance]

He thinks about it. The flex of a knuckle. Thinks of saying that's stupid, never even saw you coming,

Thinks of Jone. How she never did answer the owl.

"Uh-huh." He thinks he's tired of this: Ellis, Jone. The new cunt. "You drunk then, too?"

The handkerchief uncrumples. He lays it aside.

[nonvenomous]

There’s a cool disconnect to Dick’s temper: the slithering, slit-eyed measure of a snapping turtle or a snake pressed into a crevice, disturbed from its slumber only to realize this creature seems to know better than to risk his fingers.

“So it would seem.”

He sniffs, runs his tongue over teeth sticky with wine-dry sleep.

“What’s your name?”

[pittance]

"Digiorno,"

— Isn't what folks use. Funny how right now, it feels less the one that matters. He straightens up, fishes in a pocket.

"You wanna be drunker?"