faderift | [closed] so bite your tongue and

Turns out being a mean man makes a fair bit of noise, though at first the muffled sounds of impact don't fully register. The whimper of pain that follow reminds Abby that they're in the Gallows, not down in the prisons. Catching the sound of somebody getting socked in the gut probably isn't commonplace??

"- Did you hear that?"

She's stopped Allumin by touching his forearm, listening. There's another yelp of pain. Like a dog got kicked. "Where is that coming from?"

"Sounds like a kinky round of seven minutes in heaven," is the terrible joke he makes to answer her question.

But now that it's out of his system, he takes a moment to listen closer enough to hear the muffled sound of a familiar voice saying something about backing out. His joke is either more true than he thought or there's something sketchy going on.

"I think there's a storage closet nearby...?" He looks down the hall and then over his shoulder, trying to remember for sure. Still trying to get used to where everything is on each floor after all.

"Gross." But– ha ha, imagine if it is, "Seven minutes in hell, more like." There are a lot of weird people around here. It could be that.

But it isn't, huh. The next wallop sounds too much like a slap, the plaintive whimper of ow, ow that follows too convincing. Abby's eyes narrow.

"This way." She remembers. She spent a whole day of her quarantine snooping around this building, acquainting herself with every nook and cranny (and looking for things to take and keep for later, but that's neither here nor there). The supply closet in question is down the hall, just around the corner. She leads the way toward it, foot falls loud and purposeful, giving more than enough warning.

Edgard is not paying attention at all to whatever might be going on outside of the closet. He pays as much attention to that as he does to his hygiene which is not much.

"Don't back out." He says to Benedict again, not loud but with warning.

He grabs Benedict and delicately tosses him to the other side of the closet. Benedict hits the door with a slam. Edgard winces a little. That was harder than he intended.

"No," comes the faint protestation as Edgard makes to toss him, and upon impacting the door Benedict immediately throws his hands up over his face, curling into a ball.

"Stop, stop, stop," he whimpers, "I don't want to."

At least he hasn't told any secrets yet??

He had joked, but this definitely sounding sketchier by the minute... So, having followed Abby down the hall and around the corner to the suspiciously inhabited closet, he considers whether or not he should just open the door or knock first.

But who knocks in this situation? Is this a knocking situation? Verbal warning? What kind of verbal warning? That plus kno--

The sounds of Benedict's pleading knock him out of his overthinking, and his hand thrusts forward to grab the doorknob and whip the door open. He doesn't anticipate Benedict being against the door when he does and definitely gets knocked to the ground upon taking the full weight of the man upon him (accompanied by an "oof!" and then an "ow!" of his own).

"Getting into trouble?"

Abby was about to reach past Allumin and open the door up herself; she has to do a comical leap backward when he spills a man out onto the floor, knocking himself down in the process.

"The fuck-" Her gaze darts from the two of them, the man on the floor and the man left standing in the closet, dirtied and slightly wild looking as she automatically offers a hand to help Allumin back to his feet. She doesn't have a great feeling about any of this.

"We disturbing something?"

Edgard blinks back at these two strangers and doesn't miss a beat.

"Yes, you are actually." He says his voice very calm.

"Can you just--?"

Here he motions closing the door again with his finger and his hand.

"Get up!" He says gruffly to Benedict.

He turns back to the strangers and adds,

"Nice meeting you!"

Slightly dazed by the process of getting knocked flat, landing on Allumin and then gazing up at both the strange girl and Edgard above him, it takes Benedict a moment to react.

First, he blushes furiously, because many aspects of this are ridiculous and he’s going to have to explain it. Also, lest anyone forget, he’s a massive coward, and now there are two more witnesses to the fact.

“I can’t do it, Edgard,” he mumbles miserably, propping himself on one elbow and rubbing his still-stinging cheek, “I’ll just...”
He sighs through his teeth. “I’ll have to figure it out.”

A glance up to Allumin and Abby again. “...sorry. It’s fine.” It doesn’t seem fine.

He looks to the hand Abby offers, then to the dirty man in the closet telling Benedict to get back up, and then to the clearly bothered Benedict. Hm. Well, first, he wraps one arm around Benedict protectively - which is an unusual instinct for him to have for someone he's barely gotten to know, but there are moments enough to invoke concern for his safety. Especially in whatever context this situation is.

"I'm not going to be nosy about the particulars of this arrangement. The only thing I want to know is this: is it consensual?" His gaze is way more intense than it probably needs to be as he looks up at Edgard.

"If so, I hope you have some ground rules established."

Oh, fucking hell, it really is some kind of bawdy sex thing isn't it.

Abby's gaze hasn't left the man still standing in the closet (who is just as tall as she is, so she can look him dead in the eye), whereas Allumin is attending to the man that knocked him to the ground.

"And you could at least do it where random people won't overhear on their way down a public hallway. None of us signed up to be part of your– scene, or whatever the fuck."

With Abby's eyes on him, realization lands in Edgard's brain with a thunk.

"No!" He suddenly says too loudly. "We're not--he asked me to!"

That is not helping his case. He runs his hands through his hair and then is suddenly very irritated.

"This was perfectly private" He throws at Abby. "til you two came snooping around. And don't help him up!" He shoots at Allumin.

Here he looks at Benedict. "You can get up yourself."

He folds his arms over his chest. This is a disaster.

It hits Benedict as soon as Allumin drops the word 'consensual', and immediately he wishes he were dead (not that he minds the arm around his chest, which he doesn't shrug off-- in fact, his heart starts beating a little faster, but he's not about to address it now).

"It's-- not like that," he insists, making no move to get up yet, shooting Edgard a beleaguered glance, "...it's not. I did ask him. Because he's my friend."

He pinches the bridge of his nose. "It's a long story. I'm..." The words leave him like they're being dragged, their little fingernails scratching lines in the stone, "...trying to build my pain tolerance."

"Oh."

Well... his word choice definitely made this awkward, didn't it?

"Surely... there is a better way to go about doing that?" he posits, but he also has to remember that he himself considered the idea of asking someone to beat him up with a sword so he could practice doing stitches, so... Allumin can't judge, really.

The arm wrapped around Benedict stays, at least for now.

"We heard the sound of you beating him up," she points out, stubborn, "Were we supposed to walk away and mind our own business?"

Abruptly she's reminded of her very real, very violent fight with Ellie, and how she wanted to keep that secret and private from everybody else. So is she being hypocritical right now? Maybe so.

As for their cover story, she finally looks down at Benedict, one eyebrow raised. "You're not doing a very good job." If the whimpering was anything to go by.

Who does this stranger think she is? What does she know about Benedict?

"He's doing great!" He says defensively.

"Kicked him once, barely, and he ran away and cried for like a week. This is real progress!"

He doesn't think about the fact that he might be embarrassing Benedict. He nods sternly at Allumin.

"Let him go. He can get up himself."

In all his wrongheadedness, Edgard believes in Benedict.

It really touches the heart.

Not wanting Allumin to move his arm, Bene stays put in favor of burying his face in his hands.

"Abby!" he says in a sharp whisper, as if to say 'that wasn't very nice.' Benedict is making an effort, which counts for something.

"Alright." Allumin's arm finally releases him, giving him a little pat on the shoulder.

"As cozy as this is, I think it's time to get up now."

Abby raises both hands, palms out. "S'just the truth."

Look at him. Still on the floor, curled up against Allumin with his face in his hands. If this is real progress, it's going to take him for fucking ever to get anywhere useful.

"That's how you're doing this? Punching him until he cries and then you stop until next time? That's never going to work."

Edgard frowns and looks Abby dead in the eye. He raises one finger and hisses air through his mouth.

"Who are you? A pain tolerance developing expert?"

He motions down to Allumin,

"And who are you? Some kind of..a..." He's got nothing. Edgard quickly thinks, the man's is on the floor, what's something on the floor? "Some kind of a rug?"

Edgard holds his arms out and huffs.

Parting is such sweet sorrow, and so forth. With a little sigh, Benedict rises.

"This is Allumin," he mutters to Edgard, "one of the newer Rifters. And..." He turns to Abby, glances her up and down, and realizes he's got nothing.

"...I don't know who this is."

"Abby."

Edgard's little hiss doesn't appear to bother her at all; in fact, her brow furrows to match his own. He doesn't scare her.

To Benedict- "You should start with something gentler. Meditation, or yoga. If you learn how to control your breathing, you'll be able to handle more pain."

Maybe he is a rug - he does enjoy a good beating from time to time. While it would be funny maybe to the right person to say, it is also perhaps an inappropriate thing when you are meeting someone for the first time even with the wackiness of this particular situation. Instead, he just chuckles a bit at the rug comment and his own little joke he doesn't share.

Rug time over, time to stand up now; and so he does, giving a little bow in Edgard's direction. Then, he looks over to Benedict.

"I can also help, if you want to discuss it later," he says, trying to be, you know, vague. For reasons.

Edgard, irritated from first the interruption and then the criticism, throws his hands in the air.

"Fine!" He says, pouting.

"Not like I wanted to do this in the first place. Just helping. But, fine. Go breathe and pray with this lot."

He rolls his eyes tremendously which reveals his feelings of that particular suggestion.

"I'm-- really?"

This to Abby, and though he's never heard the word yoga before, meditation is familiar enough. That's food for thought.
Allumin's suggestion has him glancing over, his eyebrows raising with intrigue, but he can't get too invested in the possibility because there's still the matter of Edgard's feelings.

Old Benedict would have waved him off and walked away, but he can't find it in himself to be so callous now-- he believes Edgard, that he didn't want to do it. He was trying to help.
"I'm sorry," he says quietly, remaining where he stands. "I know."

"Yeah. It's a mental thing just as much as a physical thing."

She's ignoring the temper tantrum happening in the closet. It's not that she's mad at either of them, just that she thinks they're both idiots.

The man in the closet - Edgard, he reminds himself before the name escapes his memory - seems to be getting rather upset by the interruption, Benedict is probably also overwhelmed, Abby is being Abby, and everything sure does happen so much doesn't it?

"No, no! We were just concerned," he tries to say in Edgard's direction to assuage him, "you can carry on with - this, um, exercise? In fact, uhh, let me help--"

He kicks Benedict. Not very hard, but he does, right in the shin nearest to him. And then immediately has an apologetic expression in his direction.

Edgard widens his eyes in alarm.

"Don't kick him!" He says, his voice deepening in warning. "He didn't ask you!" He immediately steps in between Allumin and Benedict.

This is getting out of hand and Edgard will not let this turn into an everyone beats up Benedict party. He immediately changes tactics and turns to Abby.

"Maybe you're right. Maybe we should breathe and pray."

Edgard would rather drop dead than pray, but he's not about to let this escalate.

"Ow!" Benedict gasps, in alarm more than pain, and recoils from Allumin with a look of dramatic betrayal. But before he can say anything, Edgard swoops in, and actually... sort of says the right thing for once, which has Bene watching him in silent wonder.

But then it's over.

"I hate praying," he mumbles, and glances about, "...and I don't think any of us would even pray to the same person anyway."

Damn. Okay, Allumin.

Abby's face scrunches for a moment, an attempt to ward off bursting into laughter. Hopefully that goes unnoticed, because she doesn't want to set Benedict's guard dog off any further–

"It isn't praying." They don't know what yoga is. Thedas probably doesn't know what it is that's so sad, "It's breathing. And– being mindful, and stretching."

He already felt bad for doing it, and now between either of Benedict or Edgard's reactions (and definitely the sum of them) he feels terrible. One complete idiot who has betrayed Benedict's trust over an entire silly misunderstanding. This is so embarrassing. He attempts to hide behind his hands, his face and ears completely red from shame.

He would prefer to go hide in a hole than anything right now, and simply be a coward about this. But then that might make things more awkward in the future if things don't become smoothed over now...

"M-maybe..." his voice sounds very strained as he forces himself to speak, "you could give us all a lesson... i-if you feel inclined?"

Edgard frowns at Allumin who he sees turning red with anger. Edgard shifts his weight from one foot to another. He turns his frown on Abby again.

"Sounds like praying." He mumbles. He eyes Allumin again, trying not to miss a movement.

He looks at Benedict and shrugs.

"Let's try it."

"It isn't praying."

Why is nobody listening to her! To Edgard, the worst of all three of them, "Are you going to actually ask me if I want to teach you? Or are we starting some kind of lesson right now?"

Benedict looks between Allumin and Edgard, opens his mouth, glances to Abby, and closes it again. He shrugs. He has completely lost control of this situation, and isn't even going to try and get it back.

But, to be frank, he sort of prefers it that way.

Not as planned! Not as planned at all! He'd hoped maybe this would be a form of appeasement that would put Edgard at ease, give some value and consideration to Abby's suggestion, and things would be resolved in a way that would allow him some way to apologize properly to Benedict.

Instead! Things appear to be spiraling down into a different not-very-much-less chaotic path.

He misses Ezra, he would have talked their way out of this situation by now and everything would be fine. But he's not here, and it does no good wishing.

You know what, he's just going to keep his mouth shut for now, at most miming out a silent "I'm sorryyyyy" to Benedict.

Edgard does see the silent 'I'm sorry'. He lets out a breath and slouches slightly. While keeping his eyes on Allumin, he addresses Abby.

"If it isn't praying, show us what it is."

Then he says again,

"But I'm not praying."

"I can't show you in a hallway."

Perhaps she sounds petulant? There genuinely isn't that much room. Sorry Allumin and Benedict, are you still here... please stand-by while she turns on Edgard, "If you say 'praying' one more time, I'm going to make you wish you had."

"Edgard," Bene chimes in, attempting to circumvent any dramatics before they can get any more. Well. Dramatic, "let's hear her out. She's..."

He's meeting Abby just now, for the first time. He has no idea what she knows or what she does. He glances over her.

"...well she's got big arms." Which has to guarantee a certain level of expertise, right? At least when one is a noodle.

"Oh, Abby has more than just big arms!"

Surely, talking up his friend in this situation might help. Maybe. Hopefully.

"She's extraordinarily tough! Many of Abby's scars are wounds she stitched up herself, and when we trained together she was exceptionally courageous when faced with the various spells I threw her way," he explains. The latter might not mean much to Edgard himself, but considering the sort of magic that he and Benedict have discussed together there is an underlying hope that the statement will have weight.

"I don't know if I have met anyone of stronger mind or body than Abby. An absolute powerhouse, this one." Hopefully this doesn't sound too sensationalized, he truly does feel impressed by her and wants to make her sound as cool as she is.

Between Benedict's request and Allumin's babbling, Edgard shrugs. He supposes he can try whatever this is.

He walks right over to this supposed powerhouse, gives her a grin and says in a calm near-whisper.

"Praying."

He waits to see what will happen.

Oh, great– now Allumin is making fun of her too for some reason, what the hell. Abby shoots him a bewildered look as he starts rambling, clearly embarrassed; Edgard marching right up to her to annoy her one final time is the last straw.

"... Nice to meet you."

On her way outta there, she punches Edgard's shoulder on the way past, much, much harder than could be described as friendly.

Opening his mouth as though to protest before Abby punches Edgard, Benedict simply closes it again, deciding it's best to let this one run its course. He turns to watch her go, then furtively glances to Allumin, eyebrows raised.

They can talk about this later.

Wh?? What? What happened? When he gets the bewildered look from Abby, he's confused. When she punches Edgard and then leaves, he's even more confused.

"uhhh, have... fun? With your training?" he says to Edgard and Benedict, before going to follow after Abby in a light jog.

"Abbyyy - Are you okay? Did I say something wrong?"

[closed] so bite your tongue and

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jumps into this thread!

Re: jumps into this thread!

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are you there, Maker? it's me, Benedict

hello, you've reached the voicemail box of Tʜᴇ Mᴀᴋᴇʀ, please leave a message at the tone

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