here comes your man (open, intro post)

[birdhousesoul]

((I have decided to elide the inevitable "I'm on a space station? What's that? Why is T-Pain here, and why am I wearing this nautical-themed pashmina afghan?" sequence.

Scenario I/II is a set piece. Scenarios III and IV invite response, if anyone feels so moved!))

I. A pod begins to shake

Comments

IV

[try_winging_it]

Hawke often spends an evening in the bar. Sure, it brings back some memories she tries not to dwell on--and what on earth would Varric have to say about this place?--but it's a good place for kicking back and having idle chatter about nothing in particular, which is a good way to learn things. Her first few weeks it was one of her primary ways of figuring out how things worked in this weird place, just listening to people and getting used to the context. By this point she has friends and will go just for pleasure or to unwind. Not really for the drink. It's alcohol, technically, but it requires a certain suspension of disbelief to make herself drink it. Actually, everything here requires a certain amount of suspsension of disbelief, come to think of it

Re: IV

[birdhousesoul]

The only saving grace: there isn't a little note stuck to the back of his coat anymore. Every other aspect of this situation couldn't be much worse.

All right, it could be worse. There could be Templars! Or darkspawn. No, those would both be better, come to think of it. Then there would be something to do together! Collaboratively, on the same side

[try_winging_it]

Hawke had wondered, though she wouldn't admit to it, what it'd be like if Anders ever showed up on the station. Of course the idea occured to her. Zevran was here, after all, and if he could be, so could others; she hadn't thought it would ever really happen, but who could help wondering what it'd be like if it did? A thousand scenes, ranging from the impossible, stupidly romantic ones (it was her mind, damn it, she was allowed some unrealistic fantasizing) to the shouting and blame-flinging matches that seemed much more likely. Endless conversations rehearsed. And yes, she'd thought of the stunned speechless possibility too, how the ice might be broken, or how it perhaps wouldn't be.

But she hadn't run the full gamut after all, it seemed, because she hadn't imagined running into him happy. When was Anders last happy? Can she even remember? He's clearly been laughing, joking, as though none of it had happened, no driving tension making him half or more than half-mad, no starting a war that would tear the world they'd known apart, no

[birdhousesoul]

Anders gives a short laugh that's more like a hiccup, or maybe a bark. He kneels right there on the sticky floor, which puts him just about eye-to-eye with the hulking mabari, and takes the great face between both hands.

"You great big lump of a thing, you." There's a way that Teo likes his ears rubbed at the base, both ears at a time, one to each of the human's hands, and Anders isn't thinking about it too hard but his hands remember just how to do it. "Keeping her safe, are you? Good. Good mabari."

Are his eyes wet? It's kind of dim in here. There may be a gleam at the lower lid.

[try_winging_it]

[Teo thumps his tail on the floor again. Magic Man always was smart, he knows Teo has an important job to do. And he's good with his hands, even Leather Man hasn't quite figured out the ear trick so well, though he gets close. But then, Magic Man had years of practice. Teo licks his face, which is a sign of special favor; not many other than Master get that treatment, and even the few who do only rarely. But Magic Man is from Home, and Teo misses Home, so he's even more glad to see Magic Man than he would be anyway, so there's a lick]

That draws Hawke forward; slowly, stiffly, but forward. She keeps her eyes on Teo rather than Anders, and her throat feels dry as a desert when she speaks. "More like causing mischief wherever he goes. You know his sense of humor."

[birdhousesoul]

"Mischief, nothing. He's a good mabari," insists Anders, who wants desperately to say something light and witty, and just cannot. Just can't go there, not now, not with her.

She should have killed him.

He looks up at her, then, over Teo's head. He has to look, unflinching, steady, because he owes her that much. He can't hide behind the dog any longer, even if Teo is large enough to make that a viable option.

"It's good to see you." It's a paltry offering. He knows it. But it's true, it is good to see her, the way it's good to have rain after months of drought, the way it's good to see sunlight after weeks in the Deep Roads, and some of that truth has to be evident in the words.

And because of that, he bites back the self-abnegating impulse to offer an immediate departure, to remove himself from her sight. If she wants him gone, she'll say so. Hawke's never been shy.

[try_winging_it]

Hawke snorts a little. "Tell that to the local merchants he steals from, or the engineers who get to clean up after he's ripped apart some of their circuitry. As if this place isn't ragged enough as it is." She moves her hand just a little, hard to see, but Teo immediately moves back to sit at her feet. She reaches down and scratches the top of his head, grounding herself, and doesn't meet Anders' gaze. She can hear the depth of emotion behind the simple sentence, and it echoes inside her, but responding to it is more than she can manage just yet. Small talk, she seems to be able to do. One minute at a time. "How long have you been here?"

[birdhousesoul]

Anders rises, bracing his hands against his knees as leverage to do so, feeling old and unsteady. It's the brickquer, he's sure.

"I couldn't say exactly. A few days, maybe a week? I ... did a lot of sleeping." His eyes narrow fractionally as he studies her face, trying to gauge the weight of her question. "That makes it about ten days since we took down the Templars. I'd say we earned some beauty sleep." There, he's managed a bit of humor. Shaky, and fairly unconvincing, and somewhat tart, but it's humor. "Judging from the mirror I still need another month." Of beauty sleep, that is. Ha. Ha.

[try_winging_it]

That gets a reaction, a narrowing of eyebrows. "Ten days?" she repeats, clearly perplexed and ignoring the rest of what he says as she focuses on this bit of confusion. "I've been here for months. Five months, by our calendar." Well, why not? It's not as though anything else about how they were dragged here makes sense. She closes her eyes briefly. "It's really only been ten days for you?" And he was there for a few days after she left, from the sound of it, to see more of the aftermath. Almost, she asks about it. Almost. Five months of beauty sleep definitely hasn't been enough for her.

Beauty sleep. Hawke finally glances at him, then away almost at once, then back, clearly forcing herself to look at him without flinching. But her voice is steady enough as she says, "What you need is a bath and a shave, from the look of you. Not that that's anything new. Don't tell me you've been sleeping with the hippies."

[birdhousesoul]

"Where else is there to sleep?" He's honestly surprised to hear there may be any alternative. He hasn't been offered one. "I mean, I'm not sleeping with them," Anders hastens to clarify, "just sleeping." He scrubs at his face with his knuckles where Teo gave him a tongueswipe. Apparently even the mabari thinks he needs a bath. Really, he's had some sponge baths! It's just the laundry situation he can't seem to pin down ... "Orders taken, serah. A bath and a shave, posthaste." A little teasing, a little rueful. Easier to fall into the old pattern than to make himself think about the way she's looking at him. Easier to pretend it's because he's rough on the eye.

"I ... don't understand how it can be months for you here. Time dilation is this sort of batshit theory that only a few really specialized enchanters ever bother thinking about, and that's only when they get too old to seek any other form of enjoyment in life. It's almost all theory, no one's ever actually done anything with it beyond the application of haste on the

[try_winging_it]

For a moment, Hawke's voice takes on the dry sarcastic air he should remember. "We were kidnapped across space and time by Maker-knows-what to live on a vessel that by our standards is impossible. Batshit theories are the order of the day here. You can get them at the bar with a side of...well, some protein-based substance that tastes like chalk, but you get the drift."

She sighs and rubs a hand back through her hair, one of the gestures she does when she's very tired, or trying to think of what to do in a tricky situation. "There's rooms of a sort. They're small, space just for a bed and maybe a small table, plus a cubicle for a bathroom. But, privacy and your own space and all that. Probably better places on-board somewhere, but I hadn't bothered to look. So if you'd rather that, I know there's a number of empty ones available at the moment. Up to you." Staying with the hippies is still a step up from the Darktown clinic, after all. "I'm not kind enough to loan you one of my daggers to shave with, though. There, you're on your own

[birdhousesoul]

An odd look crosses his face, the corner of his mouth twitching upward. "Ah, so that's what - I thought it was a broom closet when she -" He coughs. "Well. I haven't had the grand tour, you might say, just whatever these fine people feel like showing me. When they're not indisposed. And when I'm willing to follow them."

Which he wasn't, into the not-a-broom-closet of Maker-is-this-hippie-taking-my-harmless-flirting-seriously.

And it's only now he realizes this talk of living quarters is probably not the best discussion to be having with the woman whose house he shared for three years going on four. Her pointed remark (ha, ha) about the dagger loan drives that fact home. No shared weaponry, no shared cutlery, no shared toiletries. No use protesting I wasn't going to ask in the first place!He does what he can for her, musters the old half-smile that's verging perilously on a smirk. "I wouldn't shave with that dagger if you paid me. I know where it's been." And he's got enough Darkspawn blood circulating about in him

[try_winging_it]

Hawke's mouth flickers towards a smile at his quip about knowing where the dagger's been, at the sight of his smirk. She can't help it. "Hard to get one of the hippies sober enough to explain anything. If you've gotten any sense out of them at all, I'm impressed. Fun company but not exactly lucid." She hasn't had a grand tour either, come to think of it. Well, a bit of a tour from Zevran. She should probably mention that Zevran's here, at some point. Later. He and Anders hadn't exactly hit it off, after all.

Later. That takes her mind past this awkward, surreal moment, or rather to the realization that there will be more than this moment. He's here. That...complicates things. There are so many undealt-with issues between them that she'd be hard-pressed to make a list if she had to, and would find it impossible to pick which one to work on first. But they'll have to be dealt with, sooner or later, one way or another, if they're both here. Their history is too intense to just be ignored or worked around for long. It's a daunting

[birdhousesoul]

Does that mean he has a choice, vis-a-vis the possibility of her leaving him alone right now? Should he take it as a good sign that she's asking?

"That's hardly a fair question," and is he joking, or is he talking about something else? Not even Anders can properly tell. "For what it's worth, you're right. I never can manage a proper bluff. Doesn't stop me trying. Or you calling me on it."

[try_winging_it]

Hawke shrugs. "Straightforward enough question, I thought. If you'd rather..." She waves a hand. "...talk later, when you're sober, I won't argue with that. You're the one who said you weren't at your best." Not that she is either, though that's shock rather than brickquer. She'd prefer brickquer.

[birdhousesoul]

Fine. It comes to this, so be it. Blood alcohol content notwithstanding, there's steel in his spine.

"I'm not going to be the one to tell you to go away. Anywhere," he says, flatly. "Even as a joke."