faderift | clopen.

WHO: Tony Stark and the Ironettes, and some of my other guys.
WHAT: Business as usual, probably.
WHEN: Just generally Justinian
WHERE: The Gallows, Kirkwall, etc.
NOTES: Some open prompts in the post for any and all, but also a gathering place for some specific starters.

Nightmares are just another excuse to join the insomnia brigade, a disparate club of people constellated around the Gallows, lit rooms, lit hearths. Nowadays (nowanights?), Tony often takes himself and his restless hands out of his private quarters, now that he has a full human woman to share personal space with and she might not appreciate the sounds of tinkering and miscellaneous farting around one wall over.

So his colleagues might find him in the peace room, drinking coffee at stupid o'clock and going over paperwork, or those who know him well might hear the sounds of clicking tools being worked and set down again in the Research work spaces, where it is much too dark to see by the single candle he has going, but that's what enchanted sunglasses are for.

During the day, he is:
- jogging, sometime past dawn, stairmastering down the tower and then running a circuit through the expansive courtyards, and then out towards the docks, before the day has a shot at getting unbearably hot and sticky;
- chained to his desk to make himself, you know, available, some paperwork stacked at his elbow while he desperately seeks some dopamine by carefully folding a paper airplane instead;
- clattering a plate of pizza down on a taken table in the dining hall, and while it's a little lopsided, it is at it promises to be, melted cheese and flat circles of meat, everything sliced into slices;
- at the training grounds where the archery range is set up, wearing some light-weight leather armor and a more elaborate gauntlet, with articulated loops around the wrist he is adjusting. "You know the story of William Tell?" he says, positioned not where the archers are, but standing amongst the dummies, which should probably be some kind of sign. "Me neither, but probably worked out okay." He readies a defensive stance. "Hit me."

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"Yeah."

He's gonna count this as Ellis surrendering, and not him. Tony looks towards the work station he'd been labouring over, and it doesn't call to him. A warm bed, a lady in it, that sounds a lot nice. Still, he sips his tea, doesn't rise up out of it yet, a sudden change in tone and tactic as he says,

"We should get outta here. Not now, I mean, like a trip. We can write it off as a business expense if we accomplish something at the same time."

Tony is allowing him a reprieve. Ellis is grateful for it, even if it takes him a few long moments to find the equilibrium necessary to dredge up a response. Reorient himself away from the memories he'd been sunk into and return to this room, the conversations they often have within it, the lightness that might color those conversations.

"Where?" is as good as agreement.

The first thing, nonsensically, that comes to mind is Orzammar.

But that likely isn't what Tony has in mind.

"Beach place," isn't Orzammar, although it's not far from Tony's mind either. If he actually says it, they might be in real danger of committing. Jealous, a little, of Wysteria's new found hand-less freedom, is how he might frame it. "Place with beaches on it. White sands, blue water, coconut shell cocktail. I bet everyone dresses sluttier the more north you go, too."

Or, says a swervey tip of Tony's head. "Either that or the next awful bog-adjacent jungle adventure we all have to go on. But those can be fun too."

Reprieve or not, there is some difficulty in switching gears to the imagining of a pleasant trip north.

And it is a stretch to consider they might find the kind of good time Tony is loosely describing in a bog.

"Aye," is agreeable enough, regardless. "The bog is more likely, if we're needing an excuse."

As a man who has accompanied Riftwatch agents on many an expedition, Ellis feels it safe to presume they would be more likely to find themselves in a swamp. The few times they've gone somewhere nice, it's ended very poorly.

"Can't wait."

It's a brief detour into whimsy, the gravitational tug of dreams and nightmares, childhood regret and violent death being a powerful kind of force still present in the room. They should go and sleep it off. Oooorrr—

Tony gestures aside with his teacup. "I got a chess board stashed somewhere in here."

The answer comes slowly.

(There is a space in which Ellis weighs whether he would rather be alone. Whether it would be better to sit with the specters that have been dredged up and drawn close.)

But eventually, he looks over to Tony. Offers up, "You'd have to teach me."

Faintly apologetic. But not a refusal.

Apologetic qualifier is, in fact, met with a spark of interest, and deeper beneath the surface, a hint of relief. Whether because Tony is not ready to sleep yet, or maybe not yet ready to let Ellis try, the nuance is lost in a tugged smile and a point. Even better.

And getting up, trotting off to go retrieve the promised board.

clopen.

no subject

no subject

no subject

googles "does dragon age have coconuts"

googles "when were coconuts invented"

nearing bow territory y/n

bow time