open.

[luaithre]

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.

Comments

[overharrowed]

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.

[luaithre]

"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."

[overharrowed]

"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.

[luaithre]

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.

[overharrowed]

"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.

[luaithre]

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.

[overharrowed]

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?"

[luaithre]

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—)

[overharrowed]

"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."

[luaithre]

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."

[overharrowed]

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.

[luaithre]

"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.

[overharrowed]

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.

[luaithre]

Nothing had felt stupider than crawling into an anonymous bed in an inn after whatever amount of misery or guilt or the quietly burning sense of needing too much had led him there with such conviction, only to then feel lonely. It had been fast, the process of becoming distinctly used to two warm bodies sharing a bed with him, after there'd been long stretches of time when they had seemed unimportant. But there it is.

Marcus shakes his head, manages not to apologise again, where his quiet fills in the blank of having missed Julius too. Both of them, together and individually.

He releases that pinch of cloth, pressing palm to the side of Julius' neck as he lifts his chin to kiss him. No memory on if they'd managed that affection before parting ways last night, but he suspects not.

[overharrowed]

They hadn't; Julius is glad they waited. Things felt too unsettled, the night before. Today things seem more steady, even if there's still a great deal that's not quite as it should be. This is as it should be, in Julius's opinion. Standing by a window in the late morning light, kissing Marcus with no rush to be doing anything else.