[His shape, redefined, comes nearer the chair, in part to impress its height on the man seated there. Cup in one hand, book in the other. Darkly dressed in the firelight.]
No, you don't.
[Close enough, now, to offer the book back to its owner without needing to reach very far. The gesture pulls his cuff to the knob of his wrist, where his simple bracelets are tied—braided cotton floss in dull red, dark grey, and one a shade in between that looks older than the others. The slim silver ring on his thumb is new. (The piercing weight of his focus is not.)]
[Low in the chair and cast in Leander's shadow, some flickering thing passes briefly through the wrinkles at the corner of Flint's eye and along the slanting line of his mouth. It's some trace dissatisfaction—a nameless thing that prickles briefly sharp—, and has been smoothed over by the time he slips the book between his thigh and the chair's arm.]
[When that nameless thing rustles, on impulse, he nearly gives chase. The ridges of his teeth are smooth and hard against his tongue, his mouth watering. The stillness of him so complete he hardly blinks. Still, but not stiff—he has relaxed into it.
It's a trace thing. An invisible adjustment—as if Flint is suddenly aware of his own shape in the world again after a series of minutes wherein he'd comfortably forgotten it.
He doesn't adjust the cup where it's balanced on his leg; the urge to do so is dismissed as unnecessary.]
That I've enjoyed our conversations, and suspect I'll notice their absence.
[Because, yes. Leander does have a way of making unexpected friends for himself, doesn't he?]
[In response to it, Leander might make himself smaller—crouch at the arm of the chair, or sit by Flint's legs and lean there like a pet—but he enjoys this vantage, the picture it makes, and there is more honesty in resisting nearness. (In wanting to be reached for instead of always reaching.)]
So will I.
[Seconds of quiet, settling comfortably, while he considers. It can't be the wine, he's only just lifting the cup now to finish it—]
I've not lain with anyone else since our first. [Let him imagine the reasons why.] Is that something you'd like to keep?
[The point he'd failed to make to either Rutyer or Yseult is that there had been a kind of truth in those dreams. That the details weren't worth remembering, but the sentiments might be. Not as the smoke of an undiscovered fire, but as the dry end of summer where the poor handling of a spark or lamp might light one.
And the truth is, he is sending a man who dreamed himself into something very dark out into a place designed to reinforce that impulse. Carry this hot coal in your palm, Leander. Would it not be prudent to encourage a sense of control over that?
A log in the fire pops loud. The spark of it glints at the corner of his eye.]
Given how everything else will be well beyond me, I should say yes. [Should. Isn't. He is frank about it.] But I've little interest in being another person who thinks it's their responsibility to restrain you. Take your pleasure. I would only warn you that the Imperium loves nothing more than to make a shackle out of the things most ready to give it.
[Instead of the cup, he gives Leander his hand. Or his hand, a thing so well worn that even keeping a chair high in a tower hasn't yet contrived to soften it, intercedes to take a thing that wasn't being offered.]
Leander. [Is like the firm shape of his thumb.] Tell me why you asked.
[Still; caught. Not trapped, but surprised, and calm in the creep of uneasy pleasure that spreads after it.
He's watching the hand, the skin's long-weathered texture, freckled creases, suggestion of fine golden hairs in firelight—and only the hand, not the rings that adorn it. Their hands, together. Contrasting masculine forms. His own fingers, no longer light as birds' bones—this healthier strength cultivated in the months since the cave—but still slim in comparison.
He takes his time in answering.
(A vow consigned to flame, rough edge of a door beneath his hand, dark eyes bright and hard. Cutting himself free of their tangle, leaving them both clumsy for the lack of its binding. You are not a possession anyone keeps.)]
To measure the extent of my usefulness by offering something of little advantage to you, but valuable to me. I was curious what you'd say. [Tilting his head, reflective,] It's been a while since anyone's held my hand.
[His hold on him is sturdy, though lacks the sharpness of a demand. It is like the soft mouth carry of a fanged hunting dog. Enveloping, and ready to give.
(If Leander is studying their hands, then Flint is watching the half of his face which is cast in shadow—how the space widens or narrows with that faint tilt.)
There is a callous along the side of the thumb pressed into the heel of Leander's palm.]
I want to understand the conclusions you've drawn from it. Is your curiosity satisfied?
[Had Leander been there for that game of swords he and Rutyer had played in the courtyard? The turn in that bout—the second round when he'd come for Byerly with all the grace of a machete hacking?]
And then tear it from your hands, to teach you a lesson?
[Fond, as though they've been close all this time. Haven't they? In their own strange ways? Both men are excellent at keeping themselves busy, always moving, and yet it persists—whatever this is. Something. Nothing playing at being something.]
No. I should like to be kept, I think, if only for a little while. [There's that flicker of mischief.] But then, I might be depriving myself of someone who'll have me more than once a year—
[There it is again. That flicker of dissatisfaction like a tightening of muscle in an animal's jaw. In the circle of Leander's fingers, Flint's wrist flexes and his hand tightens. There's no follow through tug, no jerking pull to check him with. But the impulse—]
I'm trying to give you something now I wouldn't have then.
At last Leander's silhouette moves, becomes less a tower, as he sits on the arm of the chair. His cup is discarded on some nearby surface, shelf or table, and his hand comes to cover the one tight on his wrist. To make a pet of himself now would be vulgar—instead, this. Warmth from the fire, in the space now narrow between them, their skins. The simple weight of a hand.]
[As Leander sets his cup aside, Flint's heel shifts from the foot stool. For all that it's a narrowing, there is a sense of drawing in rather than closing away in the boot's muffled thump on the rug. He shifts in the direction of that hand over his and the soft creak of the chair's arm as Leander perches there.]
My trust.
[Is punctuated by some give and take of fingers. Somewhere in the drawn sharp lines of his face lives something vulnerable.
(What did James Flint dream of? A distinct and aching sort of want made purposefully remote in the waking world.)]
This thing in Tevinter—the war there and what comes through it. That matters to me. I'm giving you a piece of it.
[Now, this—this barely lifted corner, this glimpse of something folded away, a fine gap between closed pages. The movement between his hands. The quiet of it. This he will chase—and so all trace of teasing play departs, gentle as breath. Between his eyebrows a crease comes and goes, indecisive.
Why is too broad, could become why me—he's not interested in that. The back-and-forth about leashes and what-else, that's merely a gentle application of teeth.
But the warning to keep himself close, lest it be turned on him, is fit to draw attention. Anyone who's known Leander knows also the vigilance with which he keeps his privacy; it's a wasted piece of advice that gleams when he turns it over in his mind.
[It could be why the lead in Carastes matters, or something about the shape of the war or about things that are right to do. Hand Valeriantus and his ilk tools and so curry strength in the slaves of the north. Divide the soporati from the invisible master of what the Magisterium promises them; these are broad convictions simply conveyed. They are things which can be trusted to resonate in the south.
He could easily pretend not to understand the question.]
You remember the house on that island.
[In the fire light, visible because Leander is so near and looking straight at it, that gap in his expression gives halfway. Inside it lives—]
Long before Corypheus opened the Breach, the Imperium saw fit first to strip everything from the people who would have made a home there. And then to murder one of them for it. So I would see Corypheus undone, yes. But the thing which empowered him in the first place—that I mean to burn to cinders. And I will be damned if the fucking Southern Divine thinks she should be who sets light to it just because she imagines herself to be a fitting replacement.
[Resonate in the south, perhaps, but not in him. Leander is no one, from nowhere, and his faith a disjointed construct, formed in fragments scavenged or discarded. The house on that island, so unnamed, is one such piece—there and gone again, preserved only in memory. That he stood in a place which no longer exists in the world, that is a thing of incomparable beauty. Like watching a living thing become dead. Like watching something burn. He remembers.
The ripples, rolling quietly and inexorably outward to touch every shore—the awareness that he himself might create them. He remembers that, too.
The scope of this man's intent is very grand, indeed.]
[In the dream, Qarinus and Carastes had been places subsumed by the Qun. It seems somehow fitting then that they should come from the same direction. If there is to be any basis of truth in a dream, why not bend it in a direction that favors them?
It's a thought that would seem inconsequential in the harsh light of day when placed in context of the wide world. But in a closed room and close together, it's possible the see the idea for what it is. Broad and dangerous. A thing with teeth and purpose enough to use them.
For an instant, the answer to this consensus shows both black and heated in him. Not a spark, but a fierce and ravenous darkness.]
Given the events of last night and this place's indecision, we will need to have you off quickly in order to avoid the shadow of whatever conclusions might be reached.
[If under Leander's hand his grip eases then it is by a matter of degrees.]
[The dreaming mind is unrestrained, and the spirits weaving those visions sometimes carry knowledge unknown. Inspiration lives everywhere, comes from anywhere, and is not itself concerned with safety. You follow it or you don't. And in his dream of the north, Leander flourished. Does he, awake, not deserve the same?]
Tomorrow, then. I need only dispose of a few things... the rest is done.
[Slowly, as not to draw any eyes, he has excised himself from the material of the Gallows. All that will remain of him is his work on the infirmary walls, and perhaps not even that, after they learn where he's gone. All he need do is take an assignment, some busywork or other that will send him to Kirkwall, and slip away.
Call and response: the weight of his hand becomes a squeeze. The seething dark within that fissure does not frighten him, but hisses painfully. Asks to be pried open, its anatomy tenderly examined. To be understood in raw form. That he could love, he thinks, if not the man it wears.
Pride, in its fraught contempt for rejection, does not permit him to ask—
What I want, he'd said with his hands, in silent study, is to know you—a man who cultivates himself to be seen and never known. Eleven paces. A Tevinter altus who would have understood. The exquisitely fine saw-edge of grass pulling through his fingers. The smell of dirt. That black fissure, whispering.
What he wants: to turn now and see a treasured shape in the doorway.
Soft, soft, in tender revenge for asking what Ilias hadn't thought to ask,]
[It's like a sharp point. Like the the persistent pump of blood that comes from a lethal wound. Every time the pressure over it is peeled back, there is some shock to find it still flowing. Isn't a body meant to eventually run out of blood?
(The shape of a woman is standing on the far side of the stack bookshelf. She is visible in parts and pieces, viewed in snatches through the shelf's tight packed contents. A pale hand. An untrimmed sleeve. An ear with no earring hanging from it. A dark eyes, looking. As far as the ghosts haunting the Gallows' go, she is patient.
'Has she spoken?'
'Not that I've heard.')
The flinch of his fingers is involuntary.]
My partner. [Isn't wrong.] Miranda. My wife.
[It makes sense that hers is the spirit that persists. He's done so little to satisfy it.]
Leander settles, and sits with him. What an honour it is to be shown the site of a scar that will never heal. To make a gift of one's pain, and trust him to hold it. If he could cover it with his hand, touch the ragged edges, the anguished pulse—perhaps then he would feel something for it.
The space is scant; to recite in whispers against a shorn hairline, in his voice like smoke, he needn't lean very far.]
And in Minrathous, in the heart of the Archon a sliver of fear grew, Stabbing like a wound. Though he knew not why.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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No, you don't.
[Close enough, now, to offer the book back to its owner without needing to reach very far. The gesture pulls his cuff to the knob of his wrist, where his simple bracelets are tied—braided cotton floss in dull red, dark grey, and one a shade in between that looks older than the others. The slim silver ring on his thumb is new. (The piercing weight of his focus is not.)]
You know I can make friends anywhere.
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Good. You'll need them.
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Instead, softly, a question rarely asked:]
Tell me what you're thinking.
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It's a trace thing. An invisible adjustment—as if Flint is suddenly aware of his own shape in the world again after a series of minutes wherein he'd comfortably forgotten it.
He doesn't adjust the cup where it's balanced on his leg; the urge to do so is dismissed as unnecessary.]
That I've enjoyed our conversations, and suspect I'll notice their absence.
[Because, yes. Leander does have a way of making unexpected friends for himself, doesn't he?]
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So will I.
[Seconds of quiet, settling comfortably, while he considers. It can't be the wine, he's only just lifting the cup now to finish it—]
I've not lain with anyone else since our first. [Let him imagine the reasons why.] Is that something you'd like to keep?
no subject
And the truth is, he is sending a man who dreamed himself into something very dark out into a place designed to reinforce that impulse. Carry this hot coal in your palm, Leander. Would it not be prudent to encourage a sense of control over that?
A log in the fire pops loud. The spark of it glints at the corner of his eye.]
Given how everything else will be well beyond me, I should say yes. [Should. Isn't. He is frank about it.] But I've little interest in being another person who thinks it's their responsibility to restrain you. Take your pleasure. I would only warn you that the Imperium loves nothing more than to make a shackle out of the things most ready to give it.
no subject
Hardly a revelation. It lands like a familiar cinder, nonetheless, a memory unremarked upon through the mechanics of his body.]
I've never known a place that didn't. [His open hand asks for the captain's cup.] And you'll have my work.
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Leander. [Is like the firm shape of his thumb.] Tell me why you asked.
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He's watching the hand, the skin's long-weathered texture, freckled creases, suggestion of fine golden hairs in firelight—and only the hand, not the rings that adorn it. Their hands, together. Contrasting masculine forms. His own fingers, no longer light as birds' bones—this healthier strength cultivated in the months since the cave—but still slim in comparison.
He takes his time in answering.
(A vow consigned to flame, rough edge of a door beneath his hand, dark eyes bright and hard. Cutting himself free of their tangle, leaving them both clumsy for the lack of its binding. You are not a possession anyone keeps.)]
To measure the extent of my usefulness by offering something of little advantage to you, but valuable to me. I was curious what you'd say. [Tilting his head, reflective,] It's been a while since anyone's held my hand.
no subject
(If Leander is studying their hands, then Flint is watching the half of his face which is cast in shadow—how the space widens or narrows with that faint tilt.)
There is a callous along the side of the thumb pressed into the heel of Leander's palm.]
I want to understand the conclusions you've drawn from it. Is your curiosity satisfied?
[Had Leander been there for that game of swords he and Rutyer had played in the courtyard? The turn in that bout—the second round when he'd come for Byerly with all the grace of a machete hacking?]
no subject
For this question his smile finally makes good on its threat, though he pulls it back before it can achieve its full width.]
Never.
[His closest fingers need only curl to meet a wrist, and so they do, dragging slow across softer skin. Tendons and tributaries.]
Did you think I asked because it seemed like what you'd want to hear?
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[The beat of the pulse in that wrist is a steady, regular thing.]
But I also think you asked because you wanted me to try putting a leash on you.
[His temple tilts by the narrowest degree, attention fixed. Is he wrong?]
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[Fond, as though they've been close all this time. Haven't they? In their own strange ways? Both men are excellent at keeping themselves busy, always moving, and yet it persists—whatever this is. Something. Nothing playing at being something.]
No. I should like to be kept, I think, if only for a little while. [There's that flicker of mischief.] But then, I might be depriving myself of someone who'll have me more than once a year—
no subject
I'm trying to give you something now I wouldn't have then.
no subject
At last Leander's silhouette moves, becomes less a tower, as he sits on the arm of the chair. His cup is discarded on some nearby surface, shelf or table, and his hand comes to cover the one tight on his wrist. To make a pet of himself now would be vulgar—instead, this. Warmth from the fire, in the space now narrow between them, their skins. The simple weight of a hand.]
Tell me.
no subject
My trust.
[Is punctuated by some give and take of fingers. Somewhere in the drawn sharp lines of his face lives something vulnerable.
(What did James Flint dream of? A distinct and aching sort of want made purposefully remote in the waking world.)]
This thing in Tevinter—the war there and what comes through it. That matters to me. I'm giving you a piece of it.
no subject
Why is too broad, could become why me—he's not interested in that. The back-and-forth about leashes and what-else, that's merely a gentle application of teeth.
But the warning to keep himself close, lest it be turned on him, is fit to draw attention. Anyone who's known Leander knows also the vigilance with which he keeps his privacy; it's a wasted piece of advice that gleams when he turns it over in his mind.
His fingers tighten very faintly.]
Will you trust me with the reason it matters?
no subject
He could easily pretend not to understand the question.]
You remember the house on that island.
[In the fire light, visible because Leander is so near and looking straight at it, that gap in his expression gives halfway. Inside it lives—]
Long before Corypheus opened the Breach, the Imperium saw fit first to strip everything from the people who would have made a home there. And then to murder one of them for it. So I would see Corypheus undone, yes. But the thing which empowered him in the first place—that I mean to burn to cinders. And I will be damned if the fucking Southern Divine thinks she should be who sets light to it just because she imagines herself to be a fitting replacement.
[—rage.]
no subject
The ripples, rolling quietly and inexorably outward to touch every shore—the awareness that he himself might create them. He remembers that, too.
The scope of this man's intent is very grand, indeed.]
Then let our first spark land in Carastes.
no subject
It's a thought that would seem inconsequential in the harsh light of day when placed in context of the wide world. But in a closed room and close together, it's possible the see the idea for what it is. Broad and dangerous. A thing with teeth and purpose enough to use them.
For an instant, the answer to this consensus shows both black and heated in him. Not a spark, but a fierce and ravenous darkness.]
Given the events of last night and this place's indecision, we will need to have you off quickly in order to avoid the shadow of whatever conclusions might be reached.
[If under Leander's hand his grip eases then it is by a matter of degrees.]
no subject
Tomorrow, then. I need only dispose of a few things... the rest is done.
[Slowly, as not to draw any eyes, he has excised himself from the material of the Gallows. All that will remain of him is his work on the infirmary walls, and perhaps not even that, after they learn where he's gone. All he need do is take an assignment, some busywork or other that will send him to Kirkwall, and slip away.
Call and response: the weight of his hand becomes a squeeze. The seething dark within that fissure does not frighten him, but hisses painfully. Asks to be pried open, its anatomy tenderly examined. To be understood in raw form. That he could love, he thinks, if not the man it wears.
Pride, in its fraught contempt for rejection, does not permit him to ask—
So he moves, intending to stand.]
no subject
What difference does it make?, he doesn't ask. There's little room for the indecision implied in such a question.]
Tell me what you want.
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What I want, he'd said with his hands, in silent study, is to know you—a man who cultivates himself to be seen and never known. Eleven paces. A Tevinter altus who would have understood. The exquisitely fine saw-edge of grass pulling through his fingers. The smell of dirt. That black fissure, whispering.
What he wants: to turn now and see a treasured shape in the doorway.
Soft, soft, in tender revenge for asking what Ilias hadn't thought to ask,]
Who was it they killed?
no subject
(The shape of a woman is standing on the far side of the stack bookshelf. She is visible in parts and pieces, viewed in snatches through the shelf's tight packed contents. A pale hand. An untrimmed sleeve. An ear with no earring hanging from it. A dark eyes, looking. As far as the ghosts haunting the Gallows' go, she is patient.
'Has she spoken?'
'Not that I've heard.')
The flinch of his fingers is involuntary.]
My partner. [Isn't wrong.] Miranda. My wife.
[It makes sense that hers is the spirit that persists. He's done so little to satisfy it.]
no subject
Leander settles, and sits with him. What an honour it is to be shown the site of a scar that will never heal. To make a gift of one's pain, and trust him to hold it. If he could cover it with his hand, touch the ragged edges, the anguished pulse—perhaps then he would feel something for it.
The space is scant; to recite in whispers against a shorn hairline, in his voice like smoke, he needn't lean very far.]
And in Minrathous, in the heart of the Archon a sliver of fear grew,
Stabbing like a wound. Though he knew not why.
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