faderift | [OPEN]

Desidério takes a long pull on his cigarillo, breathing out the nutty smelling tobacco smoke in a long draconic exhale.

A normal person (as normal as Nevarrans get, anyway). Small mercies.

"I assume it safe to assume," Antiva is equally present in the smaller man's accent as Nevarra is in Vanya's. "That you're not a very loud neighbor."

Despite himself, he smiles a little bit, rueful. "I have not had complaints," is a joke if you squint. "Though you can let me know."

Since he's here, he adds, "Vanya Orlov. Or if you object to a particular noise, you can always pound on the wall, I suppose."

"Amanza," says the man in the bed with the cigarette ash flecking his dark shirt front. "Desidério Amanza. This wall, or that wall?"

He thumbs first to the right, and then to the left. It's important to know which neighbor to blame, and he gets the sense that both suites are occupied.

"This one," he indicates Amanza's left. "I'm an early riser, but I hope not a loud one. You can complain if I'm wrong." He doubts he is, though; years in a barracks left him sensitive to the potential sleep of those around him. An offering, not quite a joke: "Or if you'd like to give me a list of ways you've been annoyed already, so I can know what to avoid."

It's a very long list. It starts with The weather is terrible and everyone is entirely too fine with it, to being too helpful or being not helpful enough; the ferryman is gratingly conversational. The food tastes wrong, which he can only attribute to the poor taste of Free Marcher cooks. The Gallows is dreary; the mattress is lumpy; he hates the uniforms of the Kirkwall guard. But mostly taken all together, he has a strong suspicion that the list of ways in which he has been annoyed more or less amount to This Is Not Seleny, and that for the first hour in a great number of them since catching an anchor in the hand and leaving the Weyrs, he has finally found himself without some definitive task or direction in which to move and now that fine little prickle of something like but not quite actually homesickness has needled close enough for him to feel to prick.

He misses his little apartment, and his very fine bed with its very fine linens; he misses the ugly little public house across the Taverline bridge where the mistress of the house can be relied on to kiss his cheeks and give him a free drink. He might even miss Alvez, the affable fucker. At least most of the rest will be able to write him; but his preferred strong arm is a notorious illiterate and so it seems there will be no charming little anecdotes about Chantry Sisters (in which Alvez specializes) to loiter about passing the time to while waiting around for the right man to show up for a knee-kicking.

These things would annoy anyone.

But they are not a particularly productive kind of criticism, so instead Desidério pockets them. He takes a last deep pull on his cigarillo, huffs it out, and sits directly upright. Right then. So long as they are being forward thinking:

"Do you drink, Vanya Orlov?"

There is only slight pause before he says, "I have been known to drink, from time to time. Did you have a particular idea, or just for future reference?"

He doesn't seem offended or unsettled by either possibility, but it seems prudent to clarify whether this is about to be an invitation or not. His knowledge of Kirkwall's pubs is not so comprehensive he'd offer his services unprompted, but he has been here for some time now. (And, perhaps contrary to the image he presents, he doesn't simply go to bed at sunset every evening.)

And, of course, it isn't as if they can't get alcohol in the Gallows, if desired. But Desidério's air on first meeting is that of a man who'd prefer to be surrounded by more life than a normal evening at Riftwatch offers.

Good news for everyone involved. Desidério neither intends to travel (fuck that; he has been over the harbor once already today, to say nothing of the long trudge out of The Weyrs which has preceded arriving in Kirkwall), or to drink any of the alcohol easily scavenged from the Gallows' stores. Instead, he leans over and opens the door on the little cabinet that serves as a side table. Three bottles of Antivan wine, procured in a fit of sullen impulse with a majority of his remaining pocket money from a Kirkwall dockside trader specializing in the art of robbing people blind, are tucked inside.

"How do you feel about sangiovese?"

"That it's very generous of you to offer, if you are," he says with good grace. "My tastes are generally humble, but I can recognize quality when it's available." He's certainly no connoisseur, but an adulthood in Cumberland was enough exposure that he has a working knowledge of southern Thedas' better-known vintages. (He's since gathered that most Circles outside Nevarra distinctly lacked fancy parties.)

Humble taste. Is there anything worse in the world? But he supposes he should be grateful—more for him, generally speaking.

"I can work with this," Desidério declares, as if this is a major albeit repairable fault on Vanya's part. Which, of course, it is.

He extracts one of the bottles, closes the cabinet with a thump of the door in its pocket, and rises while cracking the seal of wax. The cork is worked free. And, because he is somewhat suspicious of further disappointment at this stage, he gives the neck of the bottle a suspicious sniff. It would be his luck to have paid a small fortune for vinegar.

But the stuff must prove passable to the nose, for Desidério gives the man in the doorway an expectant head jerk. Well don't just stand there loitering.

"I just have the one cup. If you keep you own, then you may as well fetch it."

"Right." He steps out long enough to retrieve his own cup, an unadorned metal tankard that holds water and wine equally well for those with the aforementioned humble tastes.

Vanya returns and comes in properly instead of lingering in the doorway. "You're very kind to share," he observes, as he sits. "I feel as if I should be hosting you, as the new recruit."

By the time Vanya has returned, Desidério has migrated to the room's little table with its two chairs. He'd dispensed with a majority of the second set of furniture, having smuggled it away into a closet in the hopes that it might make the space less morose. But the second chair he had kept, arguably for circumstances exactly like this one.

"You can make it up to me," he says, and fills his own cup first in deference to this point. Orlov's right. This good housekeeping business is all backwards.

Though he's generous enough with the pour that lands in the other man's cup as well. In short order, they both are in possession of a dark cup of the cherry tinged wine and Desidério for his part has draped himself in his chair as if it is the thing primarily responsible for keeping all his limbs attached rather than relying on his skeleton.

"Well Vanya Orlov, how did you come to Riftwatch?" is a more interesting question than 'Which division are you in.' He can figure that one out all on his own if he cares to. "It's not to do with all those skeletons walking around Nevarran City as if they own it, is it?"

Blechk. Just the thought gives him the creeps.

He takes a sip, his initial facial expression mutely indicating this is good, thank you, but the direct question derails him before he gets as far as verbal thanks. Instead, he shakes his head. "I haven't been back to Nevarra in a long time now. No it's ... it's something of a long story in the details. But the broad strokes are that I used to be a Templar and I used to be part of the Inquisition. It didn't seem practical to me to stop being the former and attempt to keep being the latter, but Corypheus is still worth opposing."

It's the short version, but all true, as far as it goes. And if Desidério's reaction to his home nation offends him in any way, it doesn't show. (Then again, Vanya has been outside Nevarra a long time by his own admission; perhaps he's used to it.)

It's a noble sentiment, he guesses. This business of committing to the war against an evil Tevene whomstever regardless of what banner one does it under. Probably there are stories being written of it as they speak.

(There'd been a play, hadn't there? Sometimes last year.)

"Why'd you leave the Templars?"

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