At a quarter to eleven, she finally unlocked the door. "What are you doing here?" She squinted up at them through the chiming of the shop bell, her voice thick with exhaustion. "Is this about the email I sent you?" "In... a way." "In what way?" Johannes cast a shy look over their shoulder. "Could I come in?" After another moment of groggy squinting, Ms. Somoza rasped a "sure" and stepped aside to let them in. "Sorry about your client," she said as Johannes oriented themself in her office again, surrounded by mountains of paper and technology. "Pity." Johannes regarded her. She sounded sincere enough, but the platitude still rung hollow. How could a 'sorry' make up for the horror of Ms. Czajkowska's life slipping through their fingers like this? How could that plaster over the bitter rage, the disappointment, the self hatred of letting it all happen like this? "Thank you," they said anyways, softly, because none of it was really her fault.

“I think a silver one would be nice,” Sutton steamrollered on, and when Michael looked despite himself, she was squinting at the totally empty wall on the side of the house as though she was mining for precious metals, if her eyeballs were little pickaxes, and there were any precious metals to be found.

Han frowned at a small group lounging near one of the campfires. "Isn't that Niall?"

Static shot through Sadira upon hearing the name spoken aloud. She turned, half-expecting to find a stranger deep in conversation with another, but what she saw made the ground less solid under her feet.

A round, windblown face with a long scar over one eyebrow scowled in their direction.

She had seen him in glimpses for months, always an apparition that vanished from view whenever she looked twice.

• my dreamwidth (which i have mostly used so far* to catalogue character notes)
• bluesky! (have not really been posting here so far but I MAY)

Rizeth glanced to where the wagons and all their occupants sat and talked and laughed and ate, and Ashenivir wanted them gone, all gone. Why did it matter if anyone saw them simply touching? He started to reach out, but his hand stuttered to a stop before it reached Rizeth’s arm, fingers curling uselessly into his palm.

The light domestic clatter behind him was bitterly wonderful; the warm scent of ginger mixed with the faint sound of Ashenivir humming idly under his breath made his heart turn over in his chest, and if he closed his eyes he could pretend, for a moment, that this was real. That Ashenivir would bring him tea with a light touch to his shoulder, kiss him without either of them asking for it. Be as much his in this quiet moment as he was in any scene. It wasn’t going to happen. He opened his eyes and focused on the runic deviations in front of him without really seeing them. If Ashenivir was going to find domestic bliss with anyone, it wouldn’t be him.

“You could get him what I got Cain for his last birthday,” River suggested. “Would he wear cuffs like that?” Ashenivir thought of the metal bands that always adorned Cain’s wrists, and transposed them to Rizeth’s. Silver to match his collar, glinting in the candlelight of the bedroom as the hands that wore them held him down and— He cleared his throat. “I think so.”

The storm seemed fixed in place, refusing to budge from above the inn. Every sky-rending crack of thunder rattled the room, every lightning strike illuminating Ashenivir’s fear in awful, flat brightness. His fingers dug painfully into Rizeth’s leg—his turn to leave bruises tonight, apparently.

The trip back to Fred’s place seemed shorter now that she knew enough to recognize the place, the gray painted walls and the third door that belonged to him. Becca folded her note and slipped it into the crack between the door and the frame, accidentally knocking her elbow into the door as she did so. The paper fell the first time she tried, so she knelt and picked it up. When she went to stick it there again, the door opened, and it fell at her feet again. “Becca?” said Fred, standing there in his suspenders and socks. Becca straightened up, crumpling her note in her hand. “You’re home,” she said lamely. “Which is. Obvious to see. I can come back later?” “Come on,” Fred said, yanking her in via her arm. Becca had no choice but to follow him. He shut the door behind them, and Becca glanced casually around, noting the two chairs and the table that folded down from the wall, the cramped kitchen, the lumpy couch under the window, the single door on the far wall that likely opened to the bedroom. “To what do I owe this surprise?” Fred asked, crossing his arms, and either purposefully or by happenstance blocking her exit. Becca wasn’t scared though. Not yet. She lifted her chin and repeated the words she’d written for him. “I went looking for you at the record store, but you’d left. I want to talk. I want…I want to tell you the truth.”' Fred raised an eyebrow. Becca pressed herself up on her tiptoes and then sternly stopped herself. She didn’t need to draw more attention to the fact that she was acting like a child. Sighing, Fred ran a hand over his face. In the rumpled state of his clothes with his hair coming loose from the cream he used to keep it down during the day, Becca wasn’t the only one who looked young. “I’m just worried about you,” he said lowly. “I know.” “And I didn’t mean to push you.” “I know.” Fred looked at her, really looked, something sorrowful in his eyes. “I’m sorry,” he said.