CLOSED | a shadow crossed the sky,

[poleaxed]

WHO: scarlett johansson poleaxed & chris evans archademode
WHAT: Dirty jobs done dirt cheap.
WHEN: Mid-Cloudreach.
WHERE: Denerim.
NOTES: Discussions of past child abuse are highly likely.

Long travel after long travel, Jone only wants rest; unfortunately, there is none for wickedness. Taoran Hawkwind always struck Jone as a small minded mercenary. She's never met the man, of course, but they've mutual friends. He always sounded a little thick, and his camp, just outside Denerim's walls, proves it. Jone talks shop with him anyway, joking that her 'armed guard' is actually a qunari, and this far south? Everybody believes it.

Taoran is doing grunt work, trying to get a rich merchant out of taxes. Not terribly clever, especially since he's going through the Brecilian to do it. Then again, Jone's always had a bias against Gwaren and Amaranthine and does she just hate Fereldan nobles? No, not interrogating that night now.

She agrees to go with him, lying that they could use the cash. Half pay up front is bargained for, and Jone immediately uses it getting them a respectable room at a respectable inn. Within the walls of Denerim, a thatch-roofed city stacked with as many pickpockets as rich men (and more that like to slum, besides) The Wailing Willow doesn't double as a brothel, as far as Jone can tell, so she hopes Gabranth won't pitch too much of a fit.

They can only afford one room with the coin Jone's scraped together, though Jone requests a divider, explaining in her poshest accent that they're not yet married.

The innkeeper rolls her eyes, but gets the divider.

As soon as the door is closed, Jone collapses on the bed nearest the window, luxuriating in sleeping on tightly bound rope and straw mattress. She's slept on better. She doesn't care.

"Ah, this is the life, innit. Going off to do something pointlessly dangerous on the morrow, but after sleeping on a bed."

No one they've encountered in Denerim has Jone's accent, because they've steered clear of the part of the city Jone's from. She hopes Gabranth hasn't noticed.

"What d'you think of Hawkwind, Gab? Besides that bloody name. It ain't his fault; his Da picked it out of a hat."

Comments

[poleaxed]

Jone watches Gabranth relax, or do the closest thing to it. She's been thinking, lately, of why she got spooked, seeing his face for the first time. It's because he's so grand. Not being made by the crooked Maker of this world, he's better.

She wants to touch him. She's wanted to for a while, a guilty part of her mind admits, but this is with new clarity. She ignores the desire, letting it fester in the back of her mind.

But she can't help smiling to see him attempting to relax.

"That's true," Jone says. "I worry we wouldn't get as much information, but I'd know it were all true for that lad."

She has a sympathy for younger men ever since attempting and failing to take Benedict under her wing. She didn't used to care. They were all Mattieus in the making, she thought, yet Benedict surely isn't, which opens up a world of possibility for the rest of humanity.

"I'll make the deal tomorrow, before we get passage back to Kirkwall. Though, a question- Gab?"

[archademode]

He lifts a bare hand, pressing it hard across the back of his neck in one last residual long-held stretch before reaching instead for the meal set out before him, crooking a finger along the edge of the tray— drawing it near enough to make meager work of it. Truth be told he’s still unused to the idea of ale as sufficient drink, but he’ll take no more of it than necessary, and sleep will manage the rest.

“If you’ve a desire to ensure nothing slips beneath our watch, then perhaps enlist them both and compare what missives they send— though I would be wary that they might interpret this as too much despotic interest on our part in their dealings.”

Her question, however, steals his attention away from food: hazel eyes drawn up for a tentative beat.

“Speak, then.”

[poleaxed]

"I'll talk to the bird, then." She says with a wink, "I don't think she'll care much for your particular charms."

She gets a few bites in herself, careful not to bother with the bland, inedible crust, using it more like utensils. The beer is lukewarm and weak and fucking glorious after the long day she's had.

"Gab, mate, d'you aim to sleep in that?" She gestures to the whole of him, piece of pie in hand.

[archademode]

Brow immediately cinching tight for that question, his hands stilling in their work— clear enough he'd not expected the tack of their conversation to change so rapidly, though he recovers a beat later when he responds, as dourly as ever:

"Of course."

What else would he sleep in, Jone?

[poleaxed]

"Oh, fuck's sake." Dropping her pie back on the plate, she turns to her assembled luggage, a small satchel of loose clothes. She pulls out a longer chemise, her spare, and throws it at him.

"Maker, sleeping in that must be like lying in a vice. Try'n take a load off."

[archademode]

It strikes him squarely in the chest, that overwhelmingly generous offer. The stare that continues to watch Jone— unblinking— over the way the chemise crumples against him before falling listlessly in his lap is so unmoved in its own arid lack of amusement that it might as well be cut from stone.

"I do not need to 'take a load off'."

[poleaxed]

Several repressed innuendos flash through her mind.

"Maybe not," she says, lying. "But... what if it were a favor to me? That you bloody relax?"

She's testing the waters, she knows. Gabranth has proven himself nothing but courteous and truthful, even when she's horrible to him. Which is to say, how far can that be pushed? She'd feel awful, if it wasn't for his sake. Acceptable selfishness, then.

[archademode]

Sometimes he does not need the mask of an expressionless helmet. Sometimes, in fact, as this moment is clear enough to illustrate: his own acidic countenance serves that exact same punctuating purpose. His eyeline fixed, he lifts the offering with a single heavy hand...

...and sets it beside him at the very edge of the mattress.

"I have granted you favor enough."

[poleaxed]

To Jone, spirits raised by food and distance from Denerim, this seems like a challenge. Setting her food aside, she gasps, holds both hands to her heart, and flops back on the bed in the parody of a noblewoman's faint.

"Breaking me heart, you are!" She grins at him, lopsided and with too many teeth. "C'mon, Gan, that can't be comfortable."

[archademode]

“A Judge Magister requires no comfort.”

Untrue, of course. Or at the very least more policy than practice for some of the judicial magistrate proper: those who valued their place at the emperor's heels over all sworn duty. Gilt power, snared favor, status in standing. Gabranth himself, however, was never among them. A point of pride as much as it was its own problem, at times.

He watches her fall across the span of her bed with a smile, his own expression placid as stillwater; drama hardly suits his taste, and if she expects him to budge on this, those thespian endeavors seem to stir nothing up in response.

"Why can you not let this rest?"

Let a man eat in peace, Jone.

[poleaxed]

"'Cos you're me mate," Jone says, "and I worry about you."

That isn't hard to admit. Not after Denerim.

She sits back up, taking a sip of warm beer. "If you're happier, I'm being a bellend. It wouldn't be the first time. I've just been thinking, since this whole... trip."

Jone shrugs. She knows what her thoughts are worth.

[archademode]

For a time, he seems just as inclined to continue leaving her efforts where they lie: the fact remains he is entirely capable of— and strangely comfortable in— sleeping in the bare minimum of his magesterial kit. Tireless discipline, a willingness to endure the odd press of leather here or there in favor of a stern defense when they're far from figurative home and hearth.

But she speaks of worry, and for how close she keeps the drawstrings of her own emotions kept tight...

There's a narrow exhale let out through his nose, a slow lull in conversation, lasting until he reaches up to tug the compressed knit of his shirt over his own head— setting it aside and beginning the intricate process of undoing every last fastener holding in place the reinforced leather protector kept tucked beneath— until all that remains is the map of his own shirtless musculature: a testament to a life of spent service, without so much as a drop of softness to spare in those corded contours.

And with that, he returns to his meal— and their earlier subject of conversation.

"Be cautious in your approach with her. Offer her no coin until she demands it."

[poleaxed]

Jone does her best not to leer, and ends up having to turn her head entirely to avoid it. Focusing on her food, she thinks, may help her to seem like she isn't crowing over the victory. That wouldn't be any good for either of them.

"Know how to drive a bargain, I do. Used to run errands, in- well." She's lost taste for discussing her childhood, even the good parts. Maybe later. Maybe never. "Try not to scare the young lad. Talk about the future and honor and all that, you're good for that."

A bit of silence on her end, thinking. Now that she knows his self-imposed rigors, she wonders, back in Kirkwall, how he'll bathe? Will he always have to take food to his rooms, and eat alone? She doesn't like the idea, and a frown colors her expression.

"We'll talk to both of them. Right. Right..."

[archademode]

"I would not treat him as I did Lord Artemaeus." He is, after all, fairly certain Emmett won’t behave even remotely as Benedict did in turn.

Still, she stays silent for too long once her wording trails off. Her expression tight, her stare unfocused enough that he knows there is more lurking beneath the surface.

So naturally, he presses. A tentative guess as to what might be troubling her, related to all her warnings and caution.

“...he is fine, is he not?”

[poleaxed]

"Our Ben?" Her head pops up. "He's fine. He'll shake himself out of his funk."

She looks back at her food, which is now just a small pile of crumbs and an empty cup. She stands, placing the tray just outside the door for a servant to pick up.

She dithers a bit before sitting back down. Finally, she realizes her true hesitance is a fear of rejection, and that simplifies things. All fears should be run at head on, breaking as many bones as possible in the process. She doesn't get to quake and fear.

"Gab, mate," she sits down. "There're rooms in the tower that have their own baths. High up enough, there's space for proper washing tubs and tables to eat at. But they're too big for one person."

And she strongly suspects he won't take up that much room for his own sake.

[archademode]

He watches her move as he works to clear his own meal, more careful about it than any man in their situation need be. As is the case with everything else: it's a matter of practiced habit, rather than the finery— or lack thereof— that surrounds them.

Had she only asked about sharing board, his answer would have been a definitive, immediate refusal— but the way she puts it, much like her worry over his dress, is an argument made up of heartfelt concern, transparent enough in its sincerity that even he knows this isn’t a game to her.

His eyes sink for a moment, lidding beneath dark lashes as he considers the merits of what she offers.

She cannot grasp its full depth, after all: the importance of utter privacy. Much like the armor he so often hides in, there’s something beyond comforting in controlling some small part of this world so completely. To have a space in it without anyone else at his side.

He’s lived too long that way to want differently, even if it is a misery of its own for all the trials of it.

“...and you would speak of this to me, why.”

He knows why, but for the sake of consideration, he must hear it for himself.

[poleaxed]

She flashes a momentarily sharp look, as if to say that she knows that he knows. He's not an idiot, not even a little.

So she takes a deep breath, sits on the bed, and makes her proposal.

"I'd bring you your food, and I'd not be in the room we shared much anyway." Half the time, she passes out in a stable, often drunk. No, he doesn't need to know about that. "You'd have less strain placed on you, if it were the two of us. And-"

A long sigh.

"Fuck. I like spending time with you, alright? I like seeing you." He makes things better.

[archademode]

He would spare her the sting of that confession were he a truly decent man— but he is not, and she ought to know this by now.

'I like spending time with you', she says, and his lips thin into something narrower, his own posture shifting as if he were the picture of that horse from the Gallows— Moira— uncomfortable with the weight of it, and attempting to find equilibrium. He can’t be someone else. No matter how he tries to wear the fit of it: the dignity, the honor— the face of his own brother— it is only so very paper thin, that guise. The more it’s worn, the more it wears.

But....

“You do not know what you ask for.”

[poleaxed]

She sees that shift in posture, knows she's hit some nerve, and like a dog, refuses to stop gnashing her teeth over it.

"You don't know what I've lived through," she says, "if it's really so bloody terrible, getting to help you and see you most days."

[archademode]

He can feel it creeping in like a deadly premonition, the rise in tension there, promising if he carries on— or if she carries on— they’ll argue once more, snapping and snarling at one another till something gives way. Normally he would welcome the rush of anger, the build and snap of adrenaline in his veins, relieving whatever strain has managed to work its way into muscle and mind alike.

This time, however, whether it's due to the memory of mud-soaked trenches or the sight of her worrying at her lip, he finds he hasn't the stomach for it.

“This is nothing to do with you, Jone.”

[poleaxed]

That's a familiar refrain. She nods, not willing to reach farther and risk the delicate truce they've hammered out. She's weathered bloodier defeats than this. She will again.

"Alright, alright," she says, lying back on the bed once more. "Now you know, at least, if you've ever get through your bloody-mindedness to ask for help, I will."

But it's said without much heat as she lies back, eyes closing.

[archademode]

Should it gnaw at him, the small victory attained in forcing them both to reach a stalemate?

He finishes his meal in silence, sips one final touch of ale to wash the dryness from his tongue before lifting the tray and setting it beside her own just outside the doorway. Silent as the night is at this hour, his own bare footsteps feel too heavy across wooden flooring, his quiet breathing as audible as the wind outside. He sits along the mattress edge once more, ankle to opposite knee, elbow slung across it where he slouches forward in dim light.

She might well be asleep by now, when he finally speaks again:

"If you take such a room for yourself, know that I would visit for my own necessities."

[poleaxed]

She is drifting off to sleep, but his voice wakes her immediately. A lifetime of quick waking doesn't fail her now.

But it takes a moment for her to smile, a cocky little quirk of her lip. "Glad I didn't pitch a fit, now," she admits. "Considering it, I were."

[archademode]

“I’d expect nothing less.” He murmurs, settling back to lie atop the covers of his mattress, fitting his arms beneath his head.

“To sleep with you, Daughter of Denerim.”

[poleaxed]

Jone allows herself one long look, studying the shape of Gabranth's body in the half-light. Then she yawns, eyes shut, and gets comfortable. "Back at you, Son of Nowhere."