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WHO: Marcus Rowntree and you
WHAT: We don't talk about fight club, or poor coping mechanisms.
WHEN: Throughout fantasy-August
WHERE: Kirkwall
NOTES: A series of open prompts regarding violences and also just normal drinking, and a place for closed stuff as you like!

There are a few incidents that take place after Marcus misses the ferry back to the Gallows (only the first time by accident).

He joins a card game, once, nearly barred from doing so when he arrives and sets down the mage staff by his seat. He hasn't a lot of coin on him, but without much thought, he undoes the clasps of his jewel-set cufflinks and drops them among the gold, and later, the silver pin that holds his tie. Maybe it's a miscalculation, on his part: being a mage, and a man who dresses as he does at this little low-stakes corner of Lowtown, gambling with people's working wages and his finery, but he ignores the slow building of resentment as he continues to drink and continues to win, until he has no more spare funds with which he can raise, or with which to buy more whiskey.

It only goes awry when he goes to buy himself out, a hand catching his sleeve as he rises. Accusations of cheating, perhaps with magic, who the fuck could know. There's a world where he finds a means of deescalation, but in this one, he simply shoves this man hard enough to upend the table. And falls on him, furious.

The most he wins is blood and bruises. Perhaps you're there to break it up, or later, when he leaves the tavern, hands empty.

The next few times there's a scrap, he starts it. It doesn't often take much. Just one civilian whose eye snags on him long enough to be asked if he has something he'd like to say, or a snarl in the direction of a body brushing too closely past him. Marcus is not a seasoned brawler (although you could make the argument that he's getting in some practice), and loses just as much as he succeeds, if success is what you could call hitting someone harder than they care to themselves.

Find him standing up over whatever poor random drunkard caught the brunt of a temper that had little to do with him, or Marcus sinking still when the next blow catches him across the temple, splitting his vision into double. Or in the midst of it, the grim tangle of blows in a tavern full of yelled encouragement.

Once, a fight that doesn't get far. The tangle of fists, elbows, and snarling is dispersed with the ill-advised summoning of smoke and embers, catching both Marcus and his attacker (his target) in a gust of magical but nevertheless firepit-filthy smog that has the latter shove away the former.

He is very efficiently ejected from the tavern, this time, when two barflies just fearless enough manage to get involved and shove him out into the street, and toss his staff out after him, which clatters loudly on the stone. You could find him at that very moment, off-balance and moving to collect it, or a few minutes later, throwing up his dinner in a side-alley, only just avoiding his boots.

Not every evening spent late ends in violence, however. Most of them, even. There's one little Lowtown den that tolerates his presence, where he sits at the edge of a bar and pushes silvers across it to keep a steady supply of ale flowing in his direction.

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That last addition gets a small but warm smile. "Of course. Where were you planning to stay?" It's clearly a purely logistical question; it's not a question of trust, he just wants to know where they're going. Eventually, they'll probably let go of each other, but it's helpful that Marcus wants to him to at least see him to where he's staying. (If nothing else, Julius is alert to the chance of Marcus's risk of getting cheated for what is possibly the second time in the evening, and the way that chance lowers somewhat with a sober companion at his side.)

Everything else can wait until tomorrow.

Having Julius walk with him has several benefits. Wards against the possibility of cutthroats, for one—Kirkwall is not exactly known for its safe streets. Ensures Marcus does get to where he's going, after he speaks of the Red Lantern and where it can be found, instead of becoming lost. It also functions as something of a peace gesture, of allowing the other man to look after him in some small and tolerable measure before they part ways.

It's also just much less awkward than trying to shake free of each other right then, still stinging. That's also vital.

It is very early that Marcus wakes, pounding headache and some dim edges to his recollection—everything except the conversation itself, the minute details of it. There is a feeling of urgency that he carries throughout the morning, a need to act without being wholly and immediately certain as to what that looks like, but Julius' crystal remains dull (at least, of messages from Marcus) as his day continues.

It is a little by accident that they run into each other in the late afternoon, Julius returned to their quarters for whatever reason (some forgotten book, scrap of paperwork, this is what you guys get for bringing your work home with you), and then the sound of the door opening behind him.

Stepping through, Marcus has cleaned up, scraping himself together within the lines of presentable, but this is also obviously the first time today he's made it back to their room. There is a moment of pause to see the room isn't empty, but he closes the door behind him.

"Hello."

Marcus had said they'd speak, and Julius had trusted that he'd find him when he was ready. But the truth is, at present he's so focused on retrieving his wayward notes that Marcus's presence manages to fully take him by surprise. "...hello," he says, clearly shifting from one mental track into another as Marcus comes in. He does put the notes away; whatever they are, they're something that can wait. "How are you feeling?"

He means, probably, mainly the hangover; how Marcus is feeling more generally is fairly clear, after the previous evening.

"Hmh," is approximately the sound he makes, as an answer.

Which doesn't mean he doesn't wish to talk, otherwise he'd probably go about what he was going to go about doing. Shaving, probably, a few days worth of growth now showing darker than usual on his jaw and throat. Changing his clothing, also very likely, rumpled at the edges. But those priorities are quick to slip down the list of order.

He tracks Julius setting down the notes, takes that as some form of permission or sign to enter the room further, specifically in his direction. "I was going to go by your office," he explains, and clears his throat, its usual underused roughness all the worse for a hard night and the cigarettes he's since burned through.

But here you are, is the implication. He reaches out, taking one of Julius' hands. The other man could be (quite rightfully) angry with him, or resistant to familiarity, and so it is something of a testing of boundaries to breach personal space. Better, Marcus thinks, than hovering at its edge.

"I'm sorry about last night," straightforward, all the while.

The impulse to brush it aside with a reassurance is all but visible, but he pauses. "Thank you," he says, instead. "I know I surprised you, however inadvertently, and it's ... I wish I'd said something to you before then, now. But I'm glad you did come to find me today." He's more quiet than angry, and his fingers readily lace with Marcus's when he takes his hand.

It contrarily seems somehow harder, now, tapping the frankness he'd managed to reach for last night under duress.

The reticence is visible, understandable, but not offputting. In the clarity of a sober morning, it becomes quite plain to Marcus that he'd rattled the other man, never mind how surprised he'd been to see him, and he has no desire to do it again. Marcus considers the room—there's the table and seating area, and the bed, but where the former strikes him as potentially formal, the latter feels like it sends an incorrect message.

So, he draws him towards the window, a place to stand and lean, and keep their hands tangled together.

"I ought to have done so myself," he says, as his shoulder finds a place against the stone. From here, the sun isn't blaring through, sunk on the other side of the Gallows. "I've been cowardly about it. I wasn't much better last night, either, but I didn't intend to hurt you at all, even when I was."

As much time as he's spent on crawling his way out of a hangover, he's also had some time to think. About the conversation, the patterns that led to it, about what a useful conversation might be after.

"Part of all this has been that, too. Keeping things away."

"I can understand the impulse, you know," Julius said, softer. "To stay away from the people who matter to you until you're somehow better. It's not that it's unfamiliar."

It's just that it looks different from the other side, when he's the one who so often goes away. True, it looks different in Julius; he's usually still physically to hand. But he knows the pattern intimately all the same.

"I have missed you, though," he adds. "And I've wondered if I've left anything I should do undone. I suppose a bit hard not to, under the circumstances."

"I don't know."

—errs on a doubtful side of not knowing, judging by his tone. If Julius left anything undone, if Marcus had given him room to do anything otherwise, him or Petrana. Hard to imagine that if he'd been given half a chance, Julius wouldn't have simply said all the right things some more and half of this month at least might have been spent a little more peacefully. It's nice to be missed.

It's also nice to be understood, but it feels like the fantasy equivalent of a blank check, blindly cashed in. Marcus squeezes Julius' fingers just lightly. "First evening I stayed away," he says, finally, "it was because I got into a fight. Nothing to the argument, and no magic to it, just ordinary. And I didn't want to come home to you both like that, in that state.

"And then the other times it was the same, but different because I found them faster. It felt," and a pause, grasping for a word, "not good, but almost. Exhausting, which was better. Fair fights. And fewer dreams."

It isn't a good explanation for anything and it isn't really presented as one, spoken somewhere more mid-chest on Julius than to his face. He hasn't shaken it, whatever he'd been avoiding about how he would prefer to be looked at.

"A less frustrating way to be angry?" Julius suggests. He doesn't try to force Marcus to meet his gaze, letting him take the time he needs. He's here, and he's trying, and that counts for a great deal, in Julius's opinion.

It's hard not to want to suggest alternatives, to start fixing things, but he resists the urge as unhelpful for now. Instead he just waits to see if Marcus will elaborate, or correct him, or whatever else comes next. It's not unpleasant, standing by the window and holding his hand, even if Julius wishes the circumstances prompting it were better.

The sound Marcus makes to that is affirmative. Not incorrect.

And in itself, this move to inquire is reassuring, as far as responses go. Even if Julius certainly has the capability to conceal more honest thoughts and feelings and reaction behind measured response, he trusts it anyway. "A way of being so," he adds. "And doing anything for it. Not just taking it, living with it.

"I know drunkards in Lowtown aren't Templars," he adds, a shade of wryness evident in tone. "And—sorry," reflexive apology, heralding a shift in thought, bright memory offered up out of last night's fog, "I shouldn't have thrown that at you, about the Gallows."

"I could have responded better," he says, quietly. "I only ... I do know this place mean something different to you. I suspect it means something different to me, again, compared to Petrana. We all came into this place carrying heavy things, but they were different things." He's quiet a moment, his thumb moving slowly along Marcus's thumb.

"It didn't not affect me. The attack. I mean, I don't think you think that, but I know I..." Getting Marcus back had been so much his focus, and once that had been done, it was easier to prioritize his well-being. Even if Julius too had needed time to physically heal, it was easy for Julius to keep his focus on the trauma that had been done to the attack's main target.

Marcus' attention further drops to their hands, first, but only after for a moment before watching Julius' face, silent in the wake of a broken off sentence.

In the days after, Bastien had asked: how is your Fereldan? He'd responded with noting Julius' resilience, which remains true, will remain true, and he thinks less of that and more of the other man's hedging. How Marcus had gotten the worst of it, but perhaps he's used to that sort of danger, and how neither of those qualifications felt correct. Simple.

Resilient, though.

There's no end to Julius' sentence, so Marcus speaks up. "I left you with it," he says, an apology in his tone. "Not purposefully, but I did. I suppose—"

A broken off sentence, uncertain the worth of expressing something that could go wrong. But, well, not expressing things never goes right.

"Correct me," in restarting. "If I have it wrong. But there are times when we speak of what we carry, you will make it lighter. Less. In the way you speak of it. I don't know if—I never worked out if it's deliberate or not, or just what you do for yourself. It's not a good reason not to ask how you are," he adds, turning their hands in what almost constitutes a shrug. "Like I said, I've been cowardly."

But there was something there he wasn't ready to do.

Edited 2022-09-18 00:50 (UTC)

There's a long pause. Julius doesn't pull away, but his gaze is downward for a moment, considering. It's perhaps telling that he needs the time. But he does look back up, eventually.

"It isn't you in particular," he says, finally, quiet. "I only never felt as if ... things that have happened already, that nothing can change. I survived better if I made them lighter to carry with me. There were always more, after all, and I didn't see what good it would do, examining them in detail after the fact. It became a habit. I don't mean to make you wonder if I'm turning away from you in particular. I'm not."

He's still not entirely sure what would happen if he stopped. He's skirted it before, with Marcus and Petrana both, a time or two. But it feels rather like letting go of a railing while standing somewhere very high.

"I know," reassurance, quiet.

Marcus does know, now. How it had irritated him in those early days, when he hadn't. When he'd enjoyed such frank conversation with Petrana only to be met with what sounded like so much equivocating out of his fellow Circle mage, his (relatively speaking) temperate opinions on the Order and its members, his reasonableness. How his own blunter way of speaking to a thing seemed to hit all the wrong notes. They both know a little better, now.

Which doesn't mean they can't speak at cross-purposes, only trust that they aren't acting to them. "We'll never see that woman again," finally, working his way around a thing. "The Chantry won't offer an explanation. There'll be no real apology from those who allowed her to sink her claws in, in and outside the company. And I wasn't ready to move on from it all. I don't know if I am, now, either.

"And I'd like to say I only wanted not to keep you mired in it too, but I was protecting myself as well, I think. From you moving on before I was ready. But all those apologies I won't get, neither will you. We deserve them, though, Julius. You deserve anger too."

Edited 2022-09-18 03:45 (UTC)

"You know, there was always a part of me that admired people who had the trick of productive anger," he says, quietly, not a nonsequitor. "Even before we met, I've known other people too, who can use it for fuel. But I think I always felt..." He pauses, more unsure how to put his thought than whether to proceed. "I sometimes fear that if I allow myself to get properly angry, I won't be able to use it. That it will paralyze me instead. I don't know how to be only a little bit angry, after everything."

Not only Fitcher and their recent narrow escape, but everything. Corypheus, and the war, and the Blight, and Uldred and all the hundred smaller things in between those. An enormous thing, considered all together.

It isn't an abstract, this talk of anger. They, as Enchanters, know intimately the connections between any kind of strong feeling, the utility and management thereof. Particularly in apprentices, certainly, but it never does go away. The man who turned into an Abomination on Gallows grounds had no other recourse but rage, but rage can draw out all kinds of things.

It isn't everyone's means of strength. It only is sometimes Marcus', as he points out, "It hasn't served me very well, of late," with the air of admission, and a subtle flicker of humour.

"I don't need you to do anything differently. Or act differently. It's just why I haven't been bringing it to you, and Petra."

But he is, at least, here now, seeing as the other thing hasn't worked.

"I see. I do. But I don't need you to be me. I'm already dealing with it my way." Debatable, but not so patently false it can't be allowed to pass. "I only wish we were more help, I suppose. You aren't on your own, so you needn't solve this perfectly and then come back to us once it's neat again." And, in Marcus's defense, he has come back now. But perhaps it's forgivable if Julius wonders whether that would have happened as soon or in the way it did, absent a chance meeting.

It's a fair thing to wonder about.

Marcus leans back against the wall and the edge of the window, some. He does not, overnight, feel better. The hangover doesn't help, and his lungs feel like an old birds nest and his head is still pounding, but that all at least is something he more or less did to himself. Considers saying some more truly stupid nonsense.

"You do help," instead. "And I need you. I just didn't—I don't know," or he does, but he doesn't wish to go around in circles again, sober or not. "You're right," instead.

The reaction softens him, and he runs his thumb along Marcus's. "We don't have to fix the whole world, or even our whole world, this morning," he says. "What do you need right now?"

Well that's a relief.

Marcus' focus had wandered, some, during that internal sifting around for words, but sharpens now as he considers Julius seriously. Two impulses compete, and one wins out in order of priority as he asks, "Are we alright?" while his hand kind of opens a little beneath that gesture.

(He'll probably have to buy Petrana something pretty, but, for now—)

"Yes, we're alright." In another moment, he might have amended of course. Today, though, it seems important to emphasize that it's something they're both choosing, and have been choosing.

"While I don't want to make a habit of fighting with you, I think a fight now and then in better than just slowly failing to say things to each other more and more." It's a bit more specific than it might be. "I'd rather the attack not have happened to us at all, while we're on the subject, for what it's worth."

He'll take it, this reassurance. 'Alright' does not mean 'fantastic', and thus feels more fair, more attainable, today.

The last thing Julius says gets one of his nearly-laughs, easy agreement on the tip of his tongue before he holds back on it for a moment, and says, "I'd give almost anything for that," agreeably. "But you said something last night, about my not wanting to have you seen me weak. And I think that's true, after, but in the moment, when you found me there—"

A shake of his head. "I didn't care about that, weakness. And how it felt, it was good."

It strikes him, how little they spoke of it, how quickly he'd retreated, in that after.

And he continues through careful study rather than speaking to a shared distance between them, that similar care from before reapplied. "I was relieved to see you, grateful for it, all that, but also something more. Something I wouldn't trade at all. Worth it, even, in a way. I wouldn't want you to think I regretted that moment. I hold onto it."

That warms his expression substantially. He trusts Marcus's feelings now, in a way that took some time initially. But it's still nice to be told. It's what he thought of, when he insisted that he go with the rescue party and not hang back or start heading for Kirkwall on his own, despite his injuries. How much it would matter to him, were their places reversed.

"It means a lot to me too," he says. And then, fondly, "Even if I suspect Tsenka was miming being sick to her stomach behind my back, since brothers aren't supposed to have love lives, as I understand." Tsenka's dedication to Marcus, especially in getting him back in one piece, has fully endeared her to Julius, but the light tease feels warranted.

"Aye, we aren't," also fondly, his more gravelly version. Some of his remaining tension easing, as if they've more properly arrived somewhere 'alright' rather than only saying so. "I'll have to be more careful in the future."

But, you know, Tsenka is not in this room, and so Marcus reaches past their tangled hands to hook his other into a fold of Julius' robe.

A tug. "Come here," because Julius is taller (read: tall) and Marcus is comfortable in his lean.

He laughs, quiet but warm, as he lets Marcus tug him close. "I don't think there's any need to be careful just now," of Tsenka's notable absence. His free hand goes to Marcus's upper arm. If it's a little steadying, it's also just taking pleasure in their closeness when Marcus has, of late, seemed out of reach.

"Is it odd to say I've missed you?" on that note. It's not as if Marcus has never been in their company, but his absence had still had a real weight. if Julius and Petrana reacted to it differently, it's not that either of them felt it less.

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