[open] beach episode volume 2: gallows edition

[altusimperius]

WHO: everybody who wants
WHAT: (lukewarm) BEACH PARTY (on rubble, in harbor)
WHEN: late Justinian
WHERE: the Gallows, amidst its newly-acquired sea view
NOTES: he's trying

I. Prep

He didn't ask for help overtly, but Benedict is clearly working hard setting up the space he's designated for the company to have their beach staycation: drapings taken from his own stash and salvaged from the Gallows' erstwhile guest rooms are drawn across glyphed-in-place poles to create shade. He's hauled out a table, onto which he proceeds to place a variety of whatever canapés he could afford to procure with his own wages-- it's not a feast, all right-- and beside which he rolls two barrels of decent-ish wine.

From the baths come a stack of towels piled high in his arms, hindering his vision to such a degree that he may crash into someone not paying attention; pillows and the like come next, in armloads that take multiple trips, by the end of which he's visibly out of breath.

Lastly, it's his very own water pipe making an appearance, which he arranges amidst comfortable ground seating mimics how his room used to look: in fact, most of the accoutrements here are his personal belongings.
As such, he knows just how to set everything to create an attractive, if minimalist, space for an afternoon's leisure.


II. Party?

It may not be an all-out bash like their excursion to the sandier shores of the Waking Sea some years ago, but this, if nothing else, is an opportunity for work on the Gallows to pause in palatable increments. One can be clearing rubble or cataloguing property for the morning, then pop over for an hour of sunbathing and a glass of wine; they're all within calling out distance of the courtyard, and the party likely bleeds into the day's work in a manner somewhat more comfortable than if it were sequestered.

That said: the early summer sea water is cold, the sun is out but meek behind occasional cloud cover, and the festivities are on clean-swept stone rather than sand. The view across the water is of mainland Kirkwall, and all that that entails.
But it's none of it so bad, for anyone looking to take a break. A few musicians even show up a bit later in the afternoon, and Benedict provides a bonfire in the center of the party space as the sun goes down.

Anything brought to share is met with effusive thanks from Benedict, who ensures its appropriate placement and distribution. He doesn't spend much time relaxing himself, instead making the rounds with the air of a fussy host, where he's quick to offer refills or alternatives in libations, or diversions for unsatisfactory activities.

[make your own starters, do your thing, go hog wild-- if you have logistical questions feel free to ask on plurk or discord]

Comments

stephen strange | ota

[portalling]

The Head Healer is a perpetual workaholic and multi-tasker, so he spends a chunk of the day practicing magic in this new open space, where he won’t get in the way of reconstruction. Corralling other mages to practice with him, sparring with spells or flinging ever larger rocks back and forth like honing a muscle, or sending fire exploding harmlessly out into the water; at one point he does have to summon assistance to put out some of the small flames catching on one of the tents, ah fuck, sorry Benedict, someone come help —

Eventually exhausted by slinging spells, Strange takes refuge to read in the shade, brushing up on a particularly dense magical text. The sorcerer likely looks more casual than you’ve ever seen him, sprawled out on a blanket in a sleeveless shirt with trousers rolled up to the knee, trying to look relaxed and failing a little.

Throughout the day he descends on people with little jars of medieval sunscreen, golden paste mixed from some sort of tree-sap. “No, I’m not pranking you, this is real,” he explains, wearily. He has the pale look of someone who spends most of his time indoors, so there’s also smudges of lotion on his cheeks and nose. It’s not very dignified.

You can also find him enjoying some wine in the afternoon and paying keen attention to the musicians, at one point muttering to himself, “That fiddle’s a little out-of-tune.”

( feel free to wildcard, or hmu @ quadrille on discord if you wanna brainstorm; happy to do bespoke starters! )

practicing magic

[succise]

Vega is of the flinging large rocks persuasion and is now testing her force magic out in relation to boulder size. She glances across at Strange and calls, "Let's see how far we can take it."

He'll have seen her around the Gallows several times before and always straight-backed, haughty in the way she lifts her chin to look down at people as best she can. Now, she looks excited, an eager grin splitting her face. Her hair is coming loose from its tight wind at the nape of her neck and she's pushed the sleeves of her dress up to her elbows, given herself room to move.

Pointing at an incredibly large, jagged bit of stone she declares, "Whoever can move this furthest wins."

[portalling]

“Wins what, precisely? We should make it interesting with some stakes.”

The girl had the impressive talent of looking down her nose at him despite him being so much taller than her, but this eager creature is delightfully different from that suddenly-nervous voice over his crystal, the one who’d been skittish over the prospect of battle magic in the field. See, Arany, blowing stuff up is fun —

Strange is dressed like a civilian today, for the beach: regular trousers and shirt, no mage robes, no cloak. If you squint, he might not even be a rifter if it weren’t for that glow at his bare hand. He flexes his fingers, eyeing the large rock.

god, mea culpa for these crusty tags

[succise]

"Like a prize?"

Vega likes a prize. She also likes to make good, showy use of her magic without the pressure of a battle pressing in on her; this is perfect, the two of them here and Vega only in socks. Feels more like being at home, and practicing in the courtyard.

Though, as for what this prize should be, she does not have much to offer in the wake of the tower falling and ruining all the nice things she might have offered now. Thinking loud: "Maybe a favour owed, to the other, or — I have some coin, if you would like to bet on the outcome."

same 😭

[portalling]

“Money’s boring,” Strange announces, with the kind of flippancy which might have sounded perfectly at home in Tevinter high-society. This, a man who had once thrown around riches without blinking at the cost. He doesn’t have the same resources available at his disposal anymore, but the principle remains: money’s just numbers.

“I’d offer a magical artifact, but frankly put, those are mine to keep.” It’s even easier to feel like a jealous dragon now with the literal rubble of their home behind them; he’ll hoard whatever he can. He considers what’s on deck.

“A favour owed, however, would do nicely. You’re on. And— ladies first.” He offers a sweeping gesture toward the rock.

[succise]

"Don't bring them up," Vega drones, rolling her eyes, "If they were never on the table to begin with. Unless you are deliberately trying to tempt me with them? Which is extremely uncouth of you." Just so you know.

She is not actually angry about it though; you can tell by her cheeks remaining pale, instead of instantly going red. She lifts her stave — which was there the entire time by the way — examining her target in calculated silence. The stave's point is what she tilts toward the rock when she lays her spell, cleverly underneath the edge of it, a node of force magic that explodes with glorious sound and fervour, shifting the boulder... almost not at all. It rocks in place, and settles again.

Vega's teeth are bared, but she looks more determined than anything. Stave pointed like an accusatory index finger, she swivels to Strange.

"... It's heavier than I thought.

"Your turn."

[portalling]

He hasn’t started bringing a staff to his practices yet and maybe that’s part of it, or maybe it’s the heat, or simply being distracted by the fact that he could once rip down buildings without a thought and now it requires so much conscious effort,

and he could juggle a half-dozen different excuses for it, but for whatever reason, this time the boulder also just rocks in place and doesn’t move at all. Even less than Vega’s attempt.

“Fuck’s sake,” Strange mutters. Neither of them even got it airborne. He takes a deep breath and shifts his stance, trying to ground himself, and tilts his head. Also more determined than before, hating to disappoint: “Best out of three, now that we know how much it weighs? We can’t leave it at that.”

Like lifting a heavy sack of sand, he tells himself. The way you test it first, a slight lift, trying to get a gauge for how much strength is needed to throw it.

[elegiaque]

Although Gwenaëlle had been willing to remove the hated bear slanket from their bed, so as to avoid making unexpected eye contact with it in the night, it had not actually gone far. Most of the time, it lives in the gallery's conversation pit, where Small Yngvi has continued to embrace it as one of the cosiest places he can be that isn't Stephen's bath. Presently,

it is what Gwenaëlle is stretched out on in her smallclothes and a thin chemise nearby but not in his shade, sunbathing. This is sort of like participating in the social gathering, except it mostly involves having her eyes closed and not talking to anyone, which is (she is pretty certain of this) the best way to do that. Guilfoyle had shown up briefly with several bottles from the de Coucy collection (with l'jeune seigneur's compliments) and a water bucket for Hardie; she isn't sure if he actually left or lurked, and has decided it is not immediately her business.

“Are you sure I need that?” is a bit doubtful, when menaced with paste, and she doesn't actually say the words only one of us is the pastiest motherfucker in Thedas but the way she glances between her arm and his is illustrative, nevertheless. What's a skin cancer.

[portalling]

It feels like a small victory, having gotten her to come with him to this thing. Stephen thought he was the antisocial one, but it turns out any social gathering is vastly improved with your girlfriend by your side: a chance to close his eyes and try to turn off his brain (to negligible success), relax and listen to the comforting susurrus of the waves, the occasional laughter in the background. It’s not the lush tropical beach he’d taken her to on Earth, but at least there’s some sun, some drinks, and the admittedly beguiling sight of Gwenaëlle stretched out beside him, all long legs and barely-there fabric and bare skin. Listen, he’s only human.

“Okay, you probably need less of it,” Stephen admits with a faux world-weary sigh, grudging, “but you should still apply some protection. Haven’t you ever gotten sun-burned out on a ship or when you’ve been swimming too long? It’s a literal burn, you’re damaging your skin long-term.”

And he deploys the next two words with the tactical precision of an attempted strike, all portentous doom: “Premature wrinkles.”

[elegiaque]

Oh, he's good— and the moment where she transitions from about to continue protesting that she's never really burned that badly to slightly aghast at the prospect of aging visibly plays out across her expressive face exactly as he almost certainly predicted it would. Her nose wrinkles, and then — somewhat comedically — smooths out again, like she'd suddenly thought of all the lines she might be furrowing into her face. In just about precisely half a year, she'll be thirty-one, and that's properly in her thirties, and for someone who not all that long ago had been facing the prospect of growing old beside partners who mightn't,

it's actually sort of comforting that Stephen is already greying, but it's only comforting because she's started combing through her hair in front of the mirror checking. It is, one might say, a surgical strike.

She rolls over.

“Well, if you insist, you can help.”

This logic will not apply to anyone else.

[portalling]

“Well—”

Stephen shoots a vaguely self-conscious look across the rocky beach; this sort of contact is a little too uncomfortably intimate of a position for their coworkers to see him in, but. He can’t exactly dispute Gwenaëlle’s logic, when it’s genuinely hard to reach one’s back and this is a fairly normal part of going to the beach, is it not?

“Touché,” he says, bemused, and scoots over so he’s kneeling beside her, able to scoop out some of this awful paste and then start to carefully slather it onto her shoulderblades above the edge of her chemise. He maintains a discreet and frankly prudish distance for now, but his fingers dig into the meat of Gwenaëlle’s shoulder; kneading in the sunscreen, halfway to a massage.

This is going to become a problem when he needs to get even lower to reach the rest of her. He eventually mutters to himself (and her), “I might have misjudged this part of it.”

[elegiaque]

What's more likely? That Gwenaëlle, she of the pile of anatomy books and attentive interest in every aspect of his job that he'll share with her, who has taken an active and marked interest in his area of expertise and expressed consistently her trust in his competence and knowledge, has abruptly decided in this one specific thing to decide to dig her heels in about anything unfamiliar to the average peasant of the Marches,

or that she has simply got exactly what she wanted out of this exchange, at the low cost of a little playacting?

Yeah, it's that second one. The prudish distance he's keeping is just a concession to the fact that she has, in the largest part, totally won.

“I can take my chemise off if that makes it easier,” sounds so reasonable, the way that she says it. Reasonably.

[portalling]

“Gwenaëlle,” he says, and the way he draws out her name is a low warning, but it’s also the sound of a man who’s probably stuck in a losing fight. This is the sort of terrorism where she reigns supreme and plays him like a harp, while he turns skittish and self-conscious even over little things like her pressing a fleeting kiss to the corner of his mouth if they’re somewhere others might see.

A reason their original flirtation played out behind closed doors, in those private spaces where no one else could stick their nose into his business: they’re technically at work, like, all the time.

But he’s playing with fire now, as his hands slide down the angles of her shoulderblades and dip further beneath the edge of her chemise.

“The last time you threw off your clothes on a beach in front of me,” Stephen muses, “it was nighttime. I was incredibly gentlemanly and didn’t sneak a peek.”

It’s odd, casting his mind back to those days in pseudo-New York. He had been unerringly comfortable with her even then; if there had been any burgeoning awareness of more, he’d kept it buried at the time. Had only let himself see and notice and acknowledge his attraction to Gwenaëlle the way you might dispassionately note a good-looking painting.

sunscreen

[thereneverwas]

"I'm," Barrow frowns at the jar, "I'm not doing that." His gaze flits up to Strange's face and then away, with a suspicious air-- just because somebody says it isn't a prank doesn't mean anything.

Worth additional mention is the cigarette in his mouth, another mote of advice it seems he opted not to follow.

[portalling]

The doctor looks at the cigarette a little too long, but then one can practically watch him in realtime decide not to fight that particular battle. Addiction and lifelong habits and comfortable vices are hard to be argued with. A once-in-a-while beach excursion, though…

“I read up on it in a local herbalism book,” Strange offers, in a feeble attempt to make the ghastly jar sound a little more appealing. “It’s actually a folk recipe commonly used amongst the Rivaini. Perfectly vouched-for. People do this sort of thing on the open sea and on the islands.”

It is very normal!!

(He’s very aware he probably sounds like a freak.)

[thereneverwas]

"Oh," Barrow says, amiably enough, entirely unconvinced, "that's nice." We all read about things in books Stephen

[portalling]

“Fine, get carcinomas,” Strange mutters as he sets down the closed jar and sinks back into his folding fabric chair, head tipped back against it in defeat.

“Although honestly, a demon’s far more likely to get any of us first, so I don’t know why I bother. Old habit.”

It’s a bleak pronouncement, but one gets the sense he’s not taking it too hard; he likes a bit of gallows’ humour, fittingly enough for their environment.

[thereneverwas]

It's hard not to take pity on such a sight: the good doctor, defeated, slumped so pastily in his chair.

"Oh, come on now," Barrow chides, with the sort of affection one might spare for The Weird But Endearing Kid, "we already know it's the Venatori."

It's the first time he's made a joke about Granitefell-- his role in it-- and Barrow can say with some certainty that an enemy gets him before a carcinoma does.

[portalling]

He snorts a genuine laugh despite the dark subject matter (this is, after all, how he functions): “Six of one, half-dozen of the other. Maybe a dracolisk can get involved.”

There’s that creeping awareness that Barrow was one of the ones lost at Granitefell; not someone he knew well enough to have felt a specific way about it, besides the general ache of failure. There had been the vague awkwardness of looking them all in the eye afterward, after the timeline rubberbanded back into place, but Doctor Strange still carried the memory of their dead bodies. Which does remind him, though…

“You’re Andrastian, right? You’d want a funeral pyre?”

—Not exactly fun beach gossip, but he’s still been meaning to pick through this information for Riftwatch. Might as well get a head start here.

[favoriteanalyst]

Wherever Stephen has ended up in the evening, when his only option for reading is by flickering firelight, Mobius will also end up, sitting heavy with a bottle of whiskey procured from his own stash. It's likely he's done some of his own imbibing so far.

Eventually, wordlessly, he offers the bottle over to Stephen. If he wants a nip.

And after a few more moments, he takes a breath, seems to collect himself or come back to himself in some manner. "I'm keeping away from the waterline," he says mildly, like that's the main concern here. "Not gonna slip my way off the rocks." (To be fair, he's been keeping away from the waterline the whole party, knowing how cold the water is and knowing that he isn't a strong swimmer by any stretch of the imagination. Still, seems prudent to say.)

[portalling]

Stephen’s been squinting more and more at the text as the light drained out of the sky, the sentences fading into dimness; eventually he’s had to admit defeat, close his book, and set it aside. He exchanges it for the bottle of wine and takes a swig, no longer particularly fussed about things like proper glassware.

He looks at the waterline, following Mobius’ comment. There’s probably a joke here somewhere, one he wants to make,

but he waits, first, to see if he still feels that nervous jolt at the thought of a loved one drowning. It’s been thirty years— and it’s there, certainly, but it seems it’s muted and faded with age. Good. That’s alright, then.

“Do you know how to swim?” he asks, neutrally.

[favoriteanalyst]

"Ellie was teaching me. Here and there, on and off."

And, shit. Shit. Maybe he'll just have to get someone else to keep doing it. He rubs his hands together, which looks actually a little awkward and uncoordinated, given, well, so it's really just a nervous habit his muscle memory wants to resort to. "I won't immediately sink like a rock, anyway."

[portalling]

Was teaching. Won’t immediately. Clearly meaning those lessons were aborted for the very sensible reason of Ellie’s disappearance, so Stephen shoots him a dubious look. And really it’s the most predictable thing in the world when the man’s immediate response is both helpful and mildly chiding:

“Well, then we’re resuming them. Jesus christ, Mobius, you were on a ship just last summer, what if you’d fallen overboard?”

[favoriteanalyst]

"Someone would've gotten me," Mobius insists, immediately a little defensive--and a little more animated for the surprising response. "And I had good grip and good balance. I like it, the ocean. Being on it, it's invigorating. I didn't get much chance or much reason to swim in the tower, and--who's resuming these lessons anyway?" His eyebrow shoot up. "You?"

The guy that's been sitting around reading and frankly doesn't look like he sees much of the outdoors?

[portalling]

Stephen absolutely doesn’t get out into the outdoors much besides missions, but— “How hard could it be to teach?” he muses aloud. “Animals know how to swim, and if I can teach sorcery, what’s a breast-stroke against that?”

These are famous last words, probably.

But he still knuckles down, with a tip of his head toward the dark moon-lit bay of water sprawling out ahead of them: “It’s a useful skill. Not only do we have the occasional nautical mission, we quite literally live on an island.”

He might be joking, a little, like always; but there’s also perhaps a surprisingly sharper streak in his voice, stabbing in the point more than he strictly needs to.