WHO: Ellis + OTA WHAT: Homecoming WHEN: Guardian WHERE: Kirkwall NOTES: Thread collection. Closed and open starters in the comments. Holler if you want something bespoke or drop in a wildcard, I'll roll with it.
Tony is where Ellis might expect to find him: not behind his desk, or installed into the weird little reading nook offshoot to the right, but standing at the table that likely once was used to host meals and discussions, maps and reading material, but has instead been a nexus point of accumulated scrap, a sort of mini-workshop of his own.
It's late. There's not a lot of light. A big vibrant hearth does its best, and there's a lantern nearby and some lit candles, but otherwise, it's too dim to be doing this kind of work by. But likely Ellis can also recognise the eyewear, enchanted to allow the viewer to see everything as clear as day. The object he's working on is held up at eye level by a spindly frame, a glowing source of refined lyrium that splashes ill-light across the worktable. Using some kind of fine, long handled tool, Tony does not look over at the sound of the door opening as he positions a delicate ring of bright silvery metal around it, and when he releases it, it hovers in place, and begins to slowly rotate.
Tony straightens from his slight lean. The hearth has warmed the room enough that he can roll the sleeves of his shirt to his elbows and out of the way, all ordinary day-clothes dismantled into their more comfortable form, feet in winter socks. He looks no different from a few months ago. Who could tell?
"Coffee's on the desk," he says, to whoever has opened his door, failing to look up as he pivots away to check the numbers on a thaumoscope. "Or whiskey, depends on you."
Because late-night intrusions are either coffee-conversations or whiskey-conversations.
There is no reason for it, but Ellis feels such a deep ache in his chest, watching Tony. He'd missed him. And here he is, right where Ellis had left him. Working on something just as unfathomable, at an absurd hour of night. Ellis struggles to find a response for a moment, as Ruadh trots past him to take advantage of the warm and unoccupied space in front of the hearth.
"No food to accompany it?" is not necessarily about Ellis, who certainly has not eaten as he should on the journey, but about Tony, who doesn't eat as he should without reminders, in Ellis' experience.
He is still rooted there, just inside the door. This feels fragile. As if it will all come apart at the slightest movement.
Good thing Ellis didn't speak up while Tony was carefully placing a Veil quartz-infused silverite stabiliser in range of a lyrium reactor, because that could have gone awry and the neighbours would complain.
As it happens, Tony is just holding the corner of a piece of paper, and this is dropped, first, and then second, he turns to the door. He palms off his sunglasses to stare at the travel-worn, haggard, very much alive version of his best friend just standing there, doofus-like. The sunglasses are tossed with a negligent clatter onto the table.
"What time do you call this?" is the best he can do, a joke like a holding pattern while his brain calibrates to new information, the unexpectedness of it. He'd clocked out of having feelings, so give him a second.
Unbothered by impending displays of affection, Ruadh circles in front of the heart and folds himself into a ball to luxuriate in front of the fire.
Ellis, meanwhile, moves only to shift his grip on the doorknob with a shaky attempt at feigned thoughtfulness. He is gripping the handle very tightly, watching Tony. His expression softens, but he doesn't quite manage a smile. That doesn't come so easily after months without much reason for levity.
"I could come back in the morning if I've missed your office hours, Provost."
Truthfully, Ellis has very little idea of what time it is other than late. And even if there were some miniscule bit of propriety in him, it would have been absolutely overruled by the desperation to see Tony. There is no way to simply retreat to his room without laying eyes on him.
(Wysteria is asleep by now. Wysteria has a husband. Wysteria is—
Ellis isn't ready to see her.)
At the hearth, Ruadh yawns, comically and unnecessarily loud.
It's a whole lot of dog entering his room and getting comfy that Tony manages not to blink at or appear to even process. Busy processing Ellis, who is here after so long, and then the differences, the leanness, the haggardness, the exhaustion, all worn well enough to not let multiple stairs up a tower deter him.
"Do that and I'll probably think I hallucinated this whole thing," Tony says, a small cancelling slice gesture at his side, "and we'll have to start over. You planning on letting out absolutely all the heat, or—"
He is talking nonsense, just words to fill the space between them standing twenty feet apart and Tony walking over, running out of them as his hands come up to hook on Ellis' shoulders. Only sometimes does Tony actually consider the age difference between them, does he remember that Ellis is likely a young man who has seen some shit, but there's cause to consider it more often, lately,
so he opts to be the one to pull him into a hug. Not even a detachedly manful one, back slaps and shoulder claps, but warmth and gratitude and welcome. And great relief.
The door does shut. Ellis has the presence of mind for it, feels it as some urgent thing at the look on Tony's face. It's a private thing.
It somehow hadn't come to mind that Tony would reach out to him. It shouldn't be a surprise, but Ellis wasn't prepared for it. And it takes a moment, for Ellis to remember what to do with all this closeness.
But he does crumple into it all at once, tension bleeding out of him within the cinched circle of Tony's arms. He breathes out hard against Tony's shoulder.
Ellis has not once said aloud that he misses Tony. That he misses Wysteria or that he misses the chaos of Riftwatch or the drafty halls of the Gallows. He couldn't. It would have made everything unbearable in a way Ellis still doesn't know how to weather.
But it's there, in the minor shudder that runs through him, and how tightly he wraps his arms around Tony in return.
Tony also missed Ellis, the kind of thing he likewise didn't say out loud in case it felt like he was saying it about someone he'd never see again. Holden's abrupt departure felt like a bad omen, niggling superstition. If only satellites existed. If only computers and drones and missiles and phone towers and jets existed.
(He remembers the kid, for a moment, now that there's just an entirely new bank of sense-memory to import from. He only remembers blearily, in those few moments of cognition circling the drain. It would have been good to bear-hug him just once, before he had to go.)
"Did a big dog also come in here?" he asks, after a long moment of simply this, tipping his chin up enough so as not to go muffled into Ellis' shoulder.
For a moment, Ellis' answer is simply a shaky laugh.
Finally, he manages to meander his way to a quiet, "Yes."
The question is a strange sort of surprise too. This new-found piece that doesn't fit seamlessly back into the Gallows alongside him, that begs explanation, catches him the way a missed step on the stairs might.
"Ruadh," he adds, after a breath. Roo-ah, deep fondness worn into two syllables. The mabari flicks an ear in response, eyes cracking open to assess before resettling with a huff.
Tony withdraws, hands finding a place to rest briefly on either side of Ellis' curly head, before a palm claps down on his shoulder and he goes to steer him deeper into the room. There's an armchair by the fire, just one, but it's to this that Tony sets Ellis on a path towards before moving off across the room.
He turns, hefting a chair by the back, not quite as elaborately comfortable but still padded and cushioned, with armrests. In his other hand is a glass bottle of some kind of amber liquid, best he can do on short notice.
The lingering hesitation before Ellis sits betrays the momentary consideration of making Tony take the chair, an impulse evaluated and given up on in the span of a breath. Ellis knows a losing battle when he sees it.
“I came from the stables,” Ellis offers, easing into the seat. The plushness of the chair seems to highlight all the places his body hurts.
There had been a time when he was so used to such soreness. It had been a constant companion.
“I’m sorry,” has nothing to do with the stables. “I didn’t mean to be so long away.”
Thump, goes the second chair as all four feet connect with the floor almost all at once, kind of neatly punctuating Ellis's apology.
Don't worry about it is on the tip of Tony's tongue, moving to a shelf to take down two cups with a hook of his finger. Sits, still kind of hunched forward, pouring some helpings into a silence that settles between them, and the apology that dangles over head.
He offers a cup to Ellis. Brandy, by the scent of it.
"Yeah," Tony says, finally. "Starting to think it was something I said."
That moment of consideration, Ellis' eyes on the cup, lasts longer than it should. Longer than it might have, before.
But he shakes his head with a small, rueful smile. Declining.
"I shouldn't."
For a variety of reasons.
And then, after a brief pause, Ellis tells him, "I came back because of something you said."
It would be a lie to say that there hadn't been a moment, a stretch of time where Ellis had considered that he might send Thot back and vanish into Weisshaupt Fortress. Return to what he was before he'd come south. It would have been painful, but it would have been possible.
Tony stays posed in that offer for a second longer than necessary, before efficiently tipping the contents of one glass into the other, bringing the liquid close to the rim. More for me, spoken in this gesture of care-free redistribution. Reminded of a long ago memory, a mirror reflection, flying home, battered and bruised. He hadn't been very thirsty, either. Not on touch down.
"Was it when I called you good looking?"
You know, the quip before the earnest negotiations for Ellis to come home. That he'd passed off to Yseult. That he'd not told Wysteria about.
"They weren't so free with their compliments in Weisshaupt."
As if that is a drawback.
Having been seated even for a few moments, all the ways his body hurts comes into clear focus. He is tired. But he isn't so tired that he cares to leave this seat in search of his room.
"What are you working on?" Ellis asks, as if this were any other night where he's found Tony working far too late on something or other.
Well, he's making jokes. Something about that is so unexpectedly relieving that Tony's focus drops to his brandy, and then he lists backwards to drink from it. A generous mouthful, but that's just kind of how he drinks, you know, like a latent alcoholic, and he sets the glass aside after.
"Trying out a new casing," Tony says, lacing his fingers together. "Something that'll contain a higher rate of thaumic decay. I made you a present for Satinalia. You want it?"
The shift in conversation doesn't at all change the tone and cadence of his voice, seamlessly following whatever synapse firing brought it on.
The sudden turn of Tony's focus is met with a beat of quiet. Reacclimating.
Right. Satinalia. Ellis had lost track of it. That's as much a part of the pause as Ellis realigning to the new direction of their conversation, remembering that Tony's does this and that he is capable of keeping up with it.
"Yes," comes slower than it might have, but still, it arrives. Ellis straightens in his chair, prepared to rise if necessary.
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no subject
It's late. There's not a lot of light. A big vibrant hearth does its best, and there's a lantern nearby and some lit candles, but otherwise, it's too dim to be doing this kind of work by. But likely Ellis can also recognise the eyewear, enchanted to allow the viewer to see everything as clear as day. The object he's working on is held up at eye level by a spindly frame, a glowing source of refined lyrium that splashes ill-light across the worktable. Using some kind of fine, long handled tool, Tony does not look over at the sound of the door opening as he positions a delicate ring of bright silvery metal around it, and when he releases it, it hovers in place, and begins to slowly rotate.
Tony straightens from his slight lean. The hearth has warmed the room enough that he can roll the sleeves of his shirt to his elbows and out of the way, all ordinary day-clothes dismantled into their more comfortable form, feet in winter socks. He looks no different from a few months ago. Who could tell?
"Coffee's on the desk," he says, to whoever has opened his door, failing to look up as he pivots away to check the numbers on a thaumoscope. "Or whiskey, depends on you."
Because late-night intrusions are either coffee-conversations or whiskey-conversations.
no subject
"No food to accompany it?" is not necessarily about Ellis, who certainly has not eaten as he should on the journey, but about Tony, who doesn't eat as he should without reminders, in Ellis' experience.
He is still rooted there, just inside the door. This feels fragile. As if it will all come apart at the slightest movement.
no subject
As it happens, Tony is just holding the corner of a piece of paper, and this is dropped, first, and then second, he turns to the door. He palms off his sunglasses to stare at the travel-worn, haggard, very much alive version of his best friend just standing there, doofus-like. The sunglasses are tossed with a negligent clatter onto the table.
"What time do you call this?" is the best he can do, a joke like a holding pattern while his brain calibrates to new information, the unexpectedness of it. He'd clocked out of having feelings, so give him a second.
no subject
Ellis, meanwhile, moves only to shift his grip on the doorknob with a shaky attempt at feigned thoughtfulness. He is gripping the handle very tightly, watching Tony. His expression softens, but he doesn't quite manage a smile. That doesn't come so easily after months without much reason for levity.
"I could come back in the morning if I've missed your office hours, Provost."
Truthfully, Ellis has very little idea of what time it is other than late. And even if there were some miniscule bit of propriety in him, it would have been absolutely overruled by the desperation to see Tony. There is no way to simply retreat to his room without laying eyes on him.
(Wysteria is asleep by now. Wysteria has a husband. Wysteria is—
Ellis isn't ready to see her.)
At the hearth, Ruadh yawns, comically and unnecessarily loud.
no subject
"Do that and I'll probably think I hallucinated this whole thing," Tony says, a small cancelling slice gesture at his side, "and we'll have to start over. You planning on letting out absolutely all the heat, or—"
He is talking nonsense, just words to fill the space between them standing twenty feet apart and Tony walking over, running out of them as his hands come up to hook on Ellis' shoulders. Only sometimes does Tony actually consider the age difference between them, does he remember that Ellis is likely a young man who has seen some shit, but there's cause to consider it more often, lately,
so he opts to be the one to pull him into a hug. Not even a detachedly manful one, back slaps and shoulder claps, but warmth and gratitude and welcome. And great relief.
no subject
It somehow hadn't come to mind that Tony would reach out to him. It shouldn't be a surprise, but Ellis wasn't prepared for it. And it takes a moment, for Ellis to remember what to do with all this closeness.
But he does crumple into it all at once, tension bleeding out of him within the cinched circle of Tony's arms. He breathes out hard against Tony's shoulder.
Ellis has not once said aloud that he misses Tony. That he misses Wysteria or that he misses the chaos of Riftwatch or the drafty halls of the Gallows. He couldn't. It would have made everything unbearable in a way Ellis still doesn't know how to weather.
But it's there, in the minor shudder that runs through him, and how tightly he wraps his arms around Tony in return.
no subject
(He remembers the kid, for a moment, now that there's just an entirely new bank of sense-memory to import from. He only remembers blearily, in those few moments of cognition circling the drain. It would have been good to bear-hug him just once, before he had to go.)
"Did a big dog also come in here?" he asks, after a long moment of simply this, tipping his chin up enough so as not to go muffled into Ellis' shoulder.
no subject
Finally, he manages to meander his way to a quiet, "Yes."
The question is a strange sort of surprise too. This new-found piece that doesn't fit seamlessly back into the Gallows alongside him, that begs explanation, catches him the way a missed step on the stairs might.
"Ruadh," he adds, after a breath. Roo-ah, deep fondness worn into two syllables. The mabari flicks an ear in response, eyes cracking open to assess before resettling with a huff.
no subject
Tony withdraws, hands finding a place to rest briefly on either side of Ellis' curly head, before a palm claps down on his shoulder and he goes to steer him deeper into the room. There's an armchair by the fire, just one, but it's to this that Tony sets Ellis on a path towards before moving off across the room.
He turns, hefting a chair by the back, not quite as elaborately comfortable but still padded and cushioned, with armrests. In his other hand is a glass bottle of some kind of amber liquid, best he can do on short notice.
"You just get in?"
no subject
The lingering hesitation before Ellis sits betrays the momentary consideration of making Tony take the chair, an impulse evaluated and given up on in the span of a breath. Ellis knows a losing battle when he sees it.
“I came from the stables,” Ellis offers, easing into the seat. The plushness of the chair seems to highlight all the places his body hurts.
There had been a time when he was so used to such soreness. It had been a constant companion.
“I’m sorry,” has nothing to do with the stables. “I didn’t mean to be so long away.”
no subject
Don't worry about it is on the tip of Tony's tongue, moving to a shelf to take down two cups with a hook of his finger. Sits, still kind of hunched forward, pouring some helpings into a silence that settles between them, and the apology that dangles over head.
He offers a cup to Ellis. Brandy, by the scent of it.
"Yeah," Tony says, finally. "Starting to think it was something I said."
no subject
But he shakes his head with a small, rueful smile. Declining.
"I shouldn't."
For a variety of reasons.
And then, after a brief pause, Ellis tells him, "I came back because of something you said."
It would be a lie to say that there hadn't been a moment, a stretch of time where Ellis had considered that he might send Thot back and vanish into Weisshaupt Fortress. Return to what he was before he'd come south. It would have been painful, but it would have been possible.
And yet.
no subject
"Was it when I called you good looking?"
You know, the quip before the earnest negotiations for Ellis to come home. That he'd passed off to Yseult. That he'd not told Wysteria about.
no subject
Very solemn.
"They weren't so free with their compliments in Weisshaupt."
As if that is a drawback.
Having been seated even for a few moments, all the ways his body hurts comes into clear focus. He is tired. But he isn't so tired that he cares to leave this seat in search of his room.
"What are you working on?" Ellis asks, as if this were any other night where he's found Tony working far too late on something or other.
no subject
"Trying out a new casing," Tony says, lacing his fingers together. "Something that'll contain a higher rate of thaumic decay. I made you a present for Satinalia. You want it?"
The shift in conversation doesn't at all change the tone and cadence of his voice, seamlessly following whatever synapse firing brought it on.
no subject
Right. Satinalia. Ellis had lost track of it. That's as much a part of the pause as Ellis realigning to the new direction of their conversation, remembering that Tony's does this and that he is capable of keeping up with it.
"Yes," comes slower than it might have, but still, it arrives. Ellis straightens in his chair, prepared to rise if necessary.