Difference between revisions of "Log:You Tilt At Windmills"

2 December 2017

After the Autumn meeting, Kelsey finds themself in need of beer and Edmond's company, and the two of them are finally clear to make a pledge.

Edmond's flat in Highgate R08

So: Kelsey had an interesting evening, and Edmond had an interesting allnighter and has been sleeping literally all day.

That means that when his door gets gently kicked a few times, the pretty pretty Elemental takes a longer moment than usual to answer, and when he does, he's wearing basically shorts and a bathrobe-for-decency's-sake, and his hair's every which way. He's sort of squinting in the not-terribly-bright light, rubbing his eyes--

--and his expression completely changes when he sees Kelsey there. It goes from 'why does yes exist i am asleep please' to 'KELSEY! :D :D I AM AWAKE!!'. Additionally, he flings the door the rest of the way open and turns on more lights, then gives a wordless flourish of an invitation inside, stepping out of the Fairest's way.

Kelsey lifts the six-pack in his right hand. "I brought beer," he says, and steps inside. The six-pack in his left hand is cider. That may be too many syllables for Edmond at the moment, though. "I did not bring coffee. Do you need coffee? I can get coffee."

Yes, those words do grow more amused with every failure to substitute a pronoun.

And lo: IT SPEAKS. "I do not need coffee!" Edmond laughs, closing the door behind Kelsey, starry eyes gleaming. "There is beer! And not-beer, I see. This seems like a wonderfully rebellious breakfast drink. Also, I can make coffee, but it is eight thirty-seven in the evening, and if I am to have a solitary hope of bringing my schedule away from Timezone: DARKLING, I should not drink coffee at this hour." He waves his wooden hands generally in the direction of the grey formica, then, the horizon coming visible on his chest with the power of the gesticulation, and he says, "Make yourself at home! I will get dressed," as he starts for his bedroom.

Kelsey gives a melodic sigh, drooping dramatically. Right up until the weight of the cider starts to drag him offbalance, and he gives a quick sidewise step and straightens up again with a laugh. "Well, if you think you have to. I suppose." One six-pack is set on the counter, then the other. Separate motions, thank you. They're heavy. He does not attempt to follow Edmond either physically or with his eyes. He does snag a glass, because apparently drinking flowery cider out of a bottle is Unthinkable.

Edmond lingers uncertainly at his bedroom door. "I think I ought to," he says, studying Kelsey with a little tilt of his head. "Especially since you have brought beer. If you do not think it would be a mistake, I shall gladly remain lazy." Clay feet begin padding back to the counter, and a smooth polished wooden hand reaches for one of the bottles of cider, eyes on Kelsey the whole time.

It closes around the neck, and stays there, and he watches Kelsey for a lingering moment longer... then asks tentatively, "Is it later yet?"

"If you think you ought to, then do," Kelsey says, more serious. "Especially if you're worried about whether or not I'll remember the rules about where hands do and don't go." But if Edmond wants to remain lazy -- well. He won't complain on that front.

There's a pause at the question. He hesitates with hands on (his own) bottle and glass, on the verge of pouring. What breaks that moment first is a flicker of a smile. "Well," he says. "If you want it to be later, it can be."

Standing there teetering on the verge of a decision for a second, Edmond looks like nothing so much as the cover of an especially flippant urban fantasy novel. But then Kelsey answers the second question after their own hesitation, and a determined expression settles in around the edges of the bloom of a wide grin. "It is later, and I am lazy!" he declares, and pops the top off the cider with a hastily-acquired butterknife. He lifts the drink in a toast. "To cider, sleeping all day, and not being worried you will forget the rules of engagement for safe and unsafe flirting!" He takes a sip (from the bottle) and savors it, then adds, "And to fixing cash flow by cheating with cheaty magic and friendship."

Glass is poured and lifted to match, and clinked against bottle if Edmond proves to do that kind of thing. Kelsey's green eyes gleam as if they were capable of catching the faint hint of light from his own hair. Or of catching Edmond's stars. "Fixing cash flow," he observes in the most solemnly sage tones he can manage, "also helps with the cider and the sleeping all day. Busy night?" Eyebrows are permitted to twitch just a little, and Kelsey does a sly little lean in. "Was he cute?"

Clink! Then drink again. "Yes, but he was also ridiculous, and only about fifteen minutes were spent in his company, which was also spent in the company of Next Door Neighbour, whose name proves to be Elliot," Edmond says more or less, well, saucily, as he casually leans his tallness against the counter with an elbow braced there. Then he sputters laughing. "That was at the end of the night when I was looking for breakfast before bed at Cat-22. As it happens, she works there! And there was a very pretty boy there who looked nearly as attractive as you, but he is a raccoon, not a candle. I told him he was pretty, though. But I think he may have been flirting with Elliot. It is all right, though! Do not raccoons dig in the trash? That is something I do not wish to abide. I am picky."

And then he actually sets the cider down in order to haul himself up to sit on the counter, robe terribly loose and hair terribly rakish. His eyes are bright, but alongside the amusement, there's also a quiet sort of fondness as he regards Kelsey. "But no, the night was only busy in that I could not sleep, so I went to explore the woods until the sky began to lighten and my tread grew heavy. Sometimes, it is only walking for hours that can settle my thoughts. You have begun to see pieces of how troubled I can be, Kelsey Williams, do you still wish to humour my desire to make promises with you?"

"Raccoons do dig in the trash," Kelsey allows. "But in their defense, they also wash. Does that make up for it, I wonder?" His mouth is rebelling against him, curling up at the corner, reflecting the impish little laugh in his eyes. "And a raccoon almost as pretty as me. Amazing. Is it the mask? Do you like masks? Should I get a mask?"

There's an easy shift in turn, and Kelsey leans shoulders and head and hair against the refrigerator to regard Edmond-on-the-counter. "I'm glad you found your way back," he says more seriously. "I've walked these woods in the winter. It ... wasn't restful." And then his pale eyebrows arch, not for the first time in conversations with Edmond. Not for the first time in this conversation with Edmond. "Do you find disclosure necessary? Should I return the favor of giving warning, then?"

"It may be the mask," Edmond allows loftily. "I do like masks. I have one somewhere. You may borrow it should you wish to try its look on you. I do not know if washing would fix the trash-digging, though..." He picks up his cider again, and holds it loosely in both hands, between his knees.

When Kelsey's glad Edmond found his way back, the prince's mouth turns up a little, his head tilting back to regard Kelsey through half-slitted eyes. "That," he says, "is one thing you need not worry on, should you stay close by me here. I cannot lose my way on Earth, and I cannot lose track of time, and I have spent the past four years becoming very good at getting myself and others away from things that choose to chase, and I have been good, for a very long time, at hitting things until they stop moving. The winter woods no longer hold hopelessness and terror. Only hope and quiet."

He lifts his head and smiles bright and wide, then. "And Summer will not let me freeze. You can ask it to do the same for you, you know. It does not mind." And then Edmond leans forward, bottle in one hand against his dark earthen knee, other hand braced against the edge of the counter. "I wish to know all about you, but my trust in you is already assured. You do not need to tell me things you wish to keep secret from me."

Edmond's saying he can't get lost wins him another twitch upward of eyebrows; his statement about what the woods hold, an inclination of Kelsey's head (the tail of his hair attempts to make a break for it over his shoulder, but fails) and a palm-upward gesture of his free hand. "Summer and I do have that much of an understanding," he agrees. "I don't like getting caught in the same trap twice."

Green eyes glint harder for a moment, though, at Edmond's last. "Shall I tell you things you'll hear eventually anyhow, then, and be upset by? You don't join freeholds; they're too restrictive, they bind you to places and people. And you tilt at windmills -- you must have hit that idiom by now. The last freehold I was in, I wound up killing someone because Autumn said so. Do you still wish to humour my desire to make promises with you?"

You tilt at windmills. Edmond's grinning again. "Cervantes is older than I am," he agrees cheerfully. But then he holds up a finger, sitting straighter. "I will promise only to protect you. I will help your freehold if I choose to, and I frequently choose to. I could not hold keeping other oaths against you; how could I?" And he lets his hand drop, and he watches Kelsey for a moment again, studying his face. "But that is not why I do not join freeholds. I approve of them. They help those like us to survive, when they function properly. If I could join a freehold without swearing fealty and becoming a vassal of its crown, I would do so."

"I haven't sworn to this one," Kelsey says, lower, as if it were some kind of admission. "And I'm not still bound to my last. So there are no other oaths right now."

Maybe it is some kind of admission. He's talking about pledging with Edmond first.

"What part of 'I agree to listen to the local government for the duration' rubs you the wrong way?"

"Ahh. I have no oaths right now, either," Edmond tells Kelsey seriously; it could've been obvious, but it still bore saying. And then the last question, and the starry Earthbones gives the candleflame bright Fairest in front of him a brittle little smile. "I am a prince. I was stolen in order to validate a claim: She who would be Queen wished a prince beneath her. She took my future, my crown, my country, my caste, and my purity, but in ninety-nine years she never succeeded in taking my identity. I will never swear fealty."

-- brittle. That's a good word for it. It's a quality that Kelsey shares for an instant, in that sentence. She who would be Queen. He falls still, the way that candleflames sometimes do for a bare instant when they're struggling to reestablish themselves after a threatening gust of wind; twitches his attention down to his cider, after, though he doesn't drink.

"I can understand that," he says after a few moments. "If it gets to where I know enough to think about swearing in ... we'll talk." There, now a drink. And a breath. "In the mean time. I figure you want to keep things short, anyway. It'll be a hassle to keep pushing, but when you decide to move on, you won't have to wait."

For a heartbeat, a half a breath, Edmond looks stung at Kelsey's last sentence. And then he looks away; fury simmers in his mantle, the storm warning signs clear and present, that silent hush before the skies rip open and flood the fields and roads and houses, sweep away lives and livestock and livelihoods--

--but it's turned inward. "That is fair," he says in a very low voice, and the pause is audible.

Finally, an even lower voice, "I do not want to move on, but if you do, then I suppose I shall."

"That's not what I meant." Kelsey's voice matches his, dropped down to mirror him; the touch on his arm is calculated, far enough out not to startle him too much despite his looking away, not seeing the approach. "You said you don't stay places. That's all. When you decide you're done with this one ... I don't know. I came here for a reason. It depends ... what I think about that reason then."

The sky turns its face to Kelsey, and there's this look in Edmond's eyes, mixed shame and gratitude. There's no startle. "I did not stay places. I might stay here. I will not leave before you do. I will be careful not to make it necessary." Then his cider's put down again, and a warm hand of living wood settles over Kelsey's on his arm, and he's intent, and there's all the earth below and the sky above backing that intentness, bringing their full weight to bear in the sound of his conviction. "If you will stay close to me, I will protect you, and I will not leave you behind. I will not leave unless you wish it. Any way you wish to bind this, I will accept. Day to day, week to week, month to month, year after year. Yes, I want to see as much of this world as I can, but there is so much time. I did not like to put down roots, I do not wish to suffer loss-- but it is too late for that, here, now. The attachment is already there. The roots are like mint, Kelsey..."

"Week to week, for now," Kelsey answers, quiet, and the petal-shadowed hand turns under the one of living wood and laces fingers. "Not to leave, unless the other one wishes it; to protect one another as we can each do best, and be better for the better cause; and may the Wyrd give us what we need to build our homes where we find ourselves --" his mouth twitches again -- "like mint; and if one of us should prove unequal to the oath, may the Wyrd guide the other's art to make it good."

Very lightly, almost automatically, Edmond's hand-- the one whose wrist was just freed-- comes up to brush a stray lock of Kelsey's hair back away from their face. And then the corner of his mouth twitches upward, and his eyes sparkle, the stars within them glittering. "Make it so."

Despite the silliness Edmond can't help but introduce, there's a skip of the heart, the weight of the Wyrd settling in and binding the two to their promises to each other-- and Edmond tilts his head just a little, abruptly, smile wreathing his face and the heat of his mantle allowing for a gust of cooler wind, a reprieve. "Next week you may be the Picard," he teases.

Kelsey tilts his own, with a haughty little noise. "I refuse," he says, in the grandest manner he can manage with one hand holding Edmond's and the other holding his glass, "to cut off my hair for the occasion."

"This is not a wig," Edmond objects, taken aback, and he pulls Kelsey's hand up to put it on his hair. And then he reaches with his other hand to pick up his cider and take a swig. "Also this is really good, where did you get it from? ...and do you want to start a band?"

Kelsey tugs lightly at a couple of locks. "Granted. Granted. Cosplay not required, then." He ruffles said locks back into place with his fingertips. "I cheated. Did you know Burlington has an actual population? And what kind of band? Do you mean 'poking at instruments and drinking and occasionally doing something musiclike,' or do you mean 'actually trying to perform'?"

"The former, of course," Edmond says carelessly, about a thousand times more comfortable than he's been since they started getting serious. His head tilts slightly in the direction of Kelsey's hand, an unconscious movement as he brings up the cider and wiggles it in the air. "I have considered busking, but Fort Brunsett does not have an actual population and Burlington requires effort. And I would not drag you to do that thing with me, though you could certainly come and shill or mock as you see fit. I would rather just poke at instruments and drink and say we are in a band, and constantly argue over what we should call ourselves, and let people assume that we are dreamers who wish to become famous, just like all of the other bands that never play."

Kelsey's smile shows for a moment, though his eyes are tracking the cider rather than Edmond. "I'll think about it," he says, and his tone is back to being its usual self, light and playful and with a touch of music to it. "Though I do need to keep a certain amount of respectability. We could always poke at instruments and drink and say you're trying to talk me into being in a band. That might serve both our purposes better -- and if it doesn't, it converts easily enough to your plan afterward. I have to warn you, though. If we do too much of that, sooner or later we'll need somewhere to try to keep a piano."

"...I could get rid of the couch," suggests Edmond thoughtfully, and then doubletakes with perfect timing. "You play piano?!"