AWAKENINGS [ACTIVE | OPEN]
Characters: Robin Goodfellow, Ishiah, open if anyone wants to run into them.
Content: Robin and Ishiah wake into a very different New York to the one they're used to, and head out to investigate.
Location: Chelsea, en-route to St. Mark's Place.
Time of day: Morning
Warnings: Creative crudeness, with occasional forays into Greek.
Ishiah woke to the sound of drilling and, groaning, reached to pull a pillow over his head.
Wasn't there an edict limiting major construction work to the weekends? His bar stood in St. Mark's Place, and caught passing traffic from tourists as well as the usual supernatural crowd. Digging up the sidewalk couldn't be good for business. Had he even been sent notice of this? City Hall was getting slacker by the day.
With the sigh of someone used to early rising, but set in his own routine, he reached out one arm and groped toward the nightstand, trying to turn off his alarm before it started. Instead, his fingers closed over a mass of soft curls.
"Rover." The sternness of his tone was somewhat muffled by pillow-cover. "How many times. Off the bed."
Emerging to give his recalcitrant dog the usual shove required to ensure any kind of obedience, the road drilling grew to sudden, near deafening levels. Ishiah blinked. Blinked again.
No dog, no construction work. Not even his apartment. As half-light filtered through the curtains, just enough to see by, Ishiah let his hand trail lower, and smiled. His fingers brushed through dark curls, over a bare, tanned shoulder, and down the length of one arm, sleepily clutching a pillow. One Robin Goodfellow. Car salesman, Puck, and thorn in Ishiah's side since time immemorial. For a few half-dreaming moments he'd forgotten the changes recently. That he'd been sleeping in Robin's apartment, and that the night before those sleeping arrangements had become just a little closer.
The drill noise started up, and Ishiah's smile turned into a wince. Of course, he'd also forgotten that Robin snored like a constipated moose.
If anyone had anything to say about it, Robin didn't snore at all, thank you. Robin twitched a bit in bed, trying to ascertain who was poking him this time. They never did like when he couldn't recall their name come morning.
But, oh. It was Ishiah, wasn't it? A completely different thing all together. Robin lazily turned over, but not before his eyes briefly scanned the clock. What time was it?
Eyes starting to droop, Robin mumbled, "Rest assured, I'm much better in bed than your infernal dog." A sniff and a twitch, a Robin attempted to get more under Ishiah's arm without making the downright vulgar mistake of actually looking like he was trying to do so.
"Now, what in the name of Ares' unimpressive dick are you doing awake at this hour?"
It was, rather notably, before noon.
Ishiah let his arm settle around Robin's shoulder, saving the Puck the effort of trying to establish that was what he wanted, without appearing to want it. This entire scenario was new (or so old that the rules had been forgotten), it would take time and talking to establish a comfort zone between them. Attempting conversation when Robin wasn't in the mood could be vaguely approximated to trying to teach a fish to knit, however. For the moment, this was comfortable enough.
"It's nine. I wake earlier than this when I'm working." he observed. He'd stop by the bar later and ensure it hadn't collapsed under the absence of his management, but Danyeal, Cambriel and Caliban were in truth more than capable of running the place unsupervised.
Nine AM. The tail end of rush hour and, now that Robin's earthquake of a snore had stopped, strangely quiet for a Manhattan morning. No car horns, yelling street vendors, gunshots (perhaps fewer of those in Chelsea). No street noise at all, in fact. The absence made the large apartment feel strangely hollow. An echo chamber.
Resting his head against Robin's, Ishiah stared up at the pristine ceiling. No mirror, at least. "You don't have this room sound-proofed, do you?"
For many reasons, including the keeping out (and in) of several unwanted noises, he wouldn't have been entirely surprised.
Nestling into a more restful state under the comfortable weight of Ishiah's arm, Robin decided to attribute the smile flickering across his face to his still being somewhat asleep. At least, that would be his defense, if it had to be.
"You really should stop racing the clock with roosters, Ishiah; you're in danger of proving freud right about that... cock envy." A snore, to punctuate.
Robin blinked a bit in, tying to ascertain what, exactly, Ishiah was asking, before giving up and deciding for him that for once, the Peri was being straight forward.
"No, of course not, then I'd be in terrible danger of ridding the world of the sounds of my frequent and various..." And then a confused look fell over Robin face. He stopped. Was he still allowed to say those things? Should he? Becoming bored with the shock of indecision, too, joining them in bed, Robin huffed a bit and simply let the incomplete sentence hang in the air.
"It's strange. I can see your mouth moving and yet you still appear to be talking out of your posterior." Ishiah remarked drily.
Yes, Robin could still say those things. No, Ishiah wouldn't like them, but then he never had. The choice to stop saying them was Robin's, much as his was the choice to stop doing them. The possibility of that decision actually being made was enough to distract Ishiah into several moments of silence.
Enough, perhaps, to prove his point. "You may consider it an aberration to rise before lunch, but you'll find a significant portion of the City disagrees with you."
Manhattan. It never slept, but remained an early riser. Ishiah sat up, looking down at Robin. "Can you hear them?"
For that, Ishiah received a loud, long and punctuated snore. Maturity, thy name is Goodfellow.
In the wake of Ishiah's silence, Robin fell into a half-dream wherein Ishiah had become a sales clerk, and was trying to ring him up for the purchase of a penguin before Ishiah's words woke him into (mostly) full wakefulness. He pondered the question, listening, blinking his eyes through their decided request to stay closed.
He peered up at the Peri, "They're taking the day off. Maybe it's a holiday. Must you bother me infernally with petty details, you..."
Rolling over, it seemed his eyes had won in their battle to close again.
Never let it be said that it wasn't tempting. The warm bed, the warm body, curling up beside Robin and worrying about whatever might need to be worried about at some later time. There was the possibility of picking up where things had left off last night. Despite the snappishness of their words, that was tempting, too.
Bending down, Ishiah let his lips brush the jut of Robin's jaw, noting how even in repose his face never quite settled into innocence.
Then, because procrastination was an anathema to him, he shifted to the edge of the bed and tugged off the top sheet to wrap around his waist as he stood. Going to the window, he pulled back the curtains with scant regard for the Puck's preferred sleeping habits. Not that daylight would likely be much deterrent to his lie in.
...Though, something else might. At the window, Ishiah tugged open the latch and leaned out over the street. His wings flickered into slow-beating existence at his back, as though he might take flight any moment.
"Robin." Gripping the ledge, Ishiah's knuckles were white. "Robin."
"Robin, get up."
Another snore, to punctuate sudden discomfort. Lurching himself from the bed (because surely, if he did it slowly, he quite simply would've given up half way) Robin flounced across the apartment, minus sheets. Perfect as Zeus made him, Robin angrily grumbled "What?" before trudging to stand next to Ishiah, still grumbling under his breath while ducking around beautiful golden-white wings.
Robin looked out the window to see desolation. It looked as if some major deity had chosen to sit on Chelsea. Robin blinked in surprise, disbelief, something approaching panic, surely.
Some small voice in the back of his head shrugged it off. Well, he never really did like his neighbors, anyway.
Tone still tellingly incredulous, Robin gaped for a few more moments before whispering, "How did you sleep through that?" Because if it was anyone's fault, obviously, it would be Ishiah's.
"I haven't the faintest idea." While Ishiah's face retained all the usual cool detachment he had become so used to exhibiting in a crisis, his voice - quiet as a breath - held the same emotions so open in Robin's expression. He sounded, something rare enough as to be almost unheard of for him, lost.
He gestured toward a pile of rubble where luxury penthouses used to be, more familiar with ruins like these in the long abandoned places of Greece and Rome. "It's not an earthquake. The damage has been done by something above ground, not below. But--"
Pulling himself back from the window, he leant back against the wall beside it, wings still splayed wide. Easier to think when he didn't have to look. "Whatever this was, if it happened in the last few hours, don't you think there would be some kind of panic? Rescue attempts? At the very least, lines of traffic trying to get out of town."
He closed his eyes, pressing the heel of his hand against a crease slowly working it's way into his forehead. "Try turning on the news."
And Robin preferred not to think. Instead, he occupied himself with another task: searching aimlessly for the remote. Hoping it would distract him long enough while Ishiah thought of whatever it was that he was thinking of.
Because Robin would rather not think about all those dead, about where Caliban and the others are, about his contracts, acquaintances, much less the ruined mess that the lot surely is. And what if it was old news? Had they been, what, frozen in time? A spell? An illusion?
It was all too much, and so, Robin compacted it into something much smaller, poking around in sofa cushions while he tried to find the remote controller ...And, located it under a pillow near the coffee table! Robin switched the television on to his favorite news station; the anchors always sported low-cut blouses. Flipping through stations he found... static, static, white noise, more static.
Ishiah received a worried look, quickly covered up. "I have a sneaking suspicion that the newspaper, too, will be tellingly absent."
Setting his jaw, Ishiah nodded, curtly. "I wouldn't except this to be a priority stop on anyone's delivery route."
Not anymore. Ishiah picked up the cellphone he'd left on Robin's dresser, and found the signal register reading zero. He was wondering less about individuals (time for that later) and more about the city as a whole. Where was everyone. They'd both lived through greater crises than this (and his mind flickered for a moment to Pompeii, clouded thick with ash). No city, not even a neighbourhood, could empty itself so completely overnight.
Suddenly cold - the window was still open, the curtains blowing inward - Ishiah bent and started picking his clothes up from the edges of the bed, sitting down to pull on his jeans.
Robin simply 'hmph'ed and wandered off to find his clothes closet. Mercifully still in the state he'd left them, he had time to absentmindedly ponder what, exactly, had happened last night, besides a part of Chelsea deciding to imitate pancakes and New York, one of the business and commerce capitals of the world, to become a dead zone. Besides that. Them.
And then not. Robin focused instead on finding where his cuff links had wandered off to (dresser drawer, wrong box, not that there was really a system to be kept) and pondering taking a long, hot shower, possibly not alone.
But, inevitably, he was drawn back to Ishiah. "We'd best look around and see who..." or what, "is out there, if anyone."
"My thought as well." Ishiah decided not to clarify that, technically, his first thought had involved Robin staying here, where it appeared at least notionally safe. Another glance at the window disabused him of this theory; if they were going anywhere, it would be together. Not four days ago Robin had been at his last breath, and healed or not, Ishiah was in no mood to take chances over putting him back there.
"We can walk between here and the bar and see the extent of the damage. Then, if necessary, I can see about looking up contacts." St. Mark's place allowed Robin to check on the Leadros household, and Ishiah to ascertain who remained at his bar. The staff there - other Peri - would have stayed. If anyone had, they would.
Ishiah pulled a shirt over his head, and covered it with a grey leather jacket. "I'd suggest taking anything from here you think you'll need in the immediate future. In case it's not feasible to return."
Robin shrugged, noncommittal, before looking back out of the room to think... He could get more, and better, clothes; he always could. The flat screen TV was worthless, as was the stereo system and the stainless steel computerized refrigerator was hardly portable.
Fleetingly, he thought of demanding they drag the wall-sized mural from Pompeii across New York. But... no, that was far too pathetic a fate to suffer through.
Still staring at the mural, Robin mumbled, "Everything worth saving is too big to lug around Manhattan, and getting it smeared with debris would just depreciate the market value." A shrug. The specific tinge in his voice could be missed, or at least, ignored, if the listener so chose. "At your leave."
This listener rarely missed notes like that when they crept into the standard air of reassured nonchalance Robin usually sported. Ishiah patted himself down -- possessed of everything but his sword. Did he bring it? It seemed unreasonable that he wouldn't, after recent events, but something about that morning had left him disoriented and he couldn't be sure. Should the need arise, there seemed to be plenty of twisted metal on the street with which to make do.
Then, because he had neither missed, nor ignored the things that Robin didn't say, he moved to rest a hand on the Puck's shoulder. Drawing his gaze, hopefully, from the mural, and the memories. "We'll come back for what we can, as soon as we've found somewhere secure."
He didn't say 'safe'. Today, moreso than ever, the very word seemed like an illusion.
Robin just flicked the hand from his shoulder, wandering off towards the door. And elaborate 'right this way' gesture awaited Ishiah, Robin standing before him.
"After you."
A pause before he added, "We can stop by the dealership on the way, and see how many pieces it's in, and if that's the usual amount."
"Of course." After him, then. Ishiah hesitated as he passed Robin in the doorframe, drawn by the urge to step off the eggshells on which they were both treading and see how kissing him might diffuse the prickle of tension between them. Of course, it might as easily spark something worse. Now wasn't the time.
Ducking his head, Ishiah kissed him anyway. Brief, hard and determined, it sent a message that was easier to say without words, anyway. I haven't forgotten.
And he started down the stairwell toward the street outside.
Robin was, for a rare, fleeting moment, speechless. He leaned back on the door frame to touch a hand to his lips, as if inspecting for possible wounds left.
The look of surprise flickered into a smile, and then acceptance. Robin turned, grinning in a way that could only be described as smug, clicking a heel before following Ishiah down the hall, the stairs, out of the building.
Content: Robin and Ishiah wake into a very different New York to the one they're used to, and head out to investigate.
Location: Chelsea, en-route to St. Mark's Place.
Time of day: Morning
Warnings: Creative crudeness, with occasional forays into Greek.
Ishiah woke to the sound of drilling and, groaning, reached to pull a pillow over his head.
Wasn't there an edict limiting major construction work to the weekends? His bar stood in St. Mark's Place, and caught passing traffic from tourists as well as the usual supernatural crowd. Digging up the sidewalk couldn't be good for business. Had he even been sent notice of this? City Hall was getting slacker by the day.
With the sigh of someone used to early rising, but set in his own routine, he reached out one arm and groped toward the nightstand, trying to turn off his alarm before it started. Instead, his fingers closed over a mass of soft curls.
"Rover." The sternness of his tone was somewhat muffled by pillow-cover. "How many times. Off the bed."
Emerging to give his recalcitrant dog the usual shove required to ensure any kind of obedience, the road drilling grew to sudden, near deafening levels. Ishiah blinked. Blinked again.
No dog, no construction work. Not even his apartment. As half-light filtered through the curtains, just enough to see by, Ishiah let his hand trail lower, and smiled. His fingers brushed through dark curls, over a bare, tanned shoulder, and down the length of one arm, sleepily clutching a pillow. One Robin Goodfellow. Car salesman, Puck, and thorn in Ishiah's side since time immemorial. For a few half-dreaming moments he'd forgotten the changes recently. That he'd been sleeping in Robin's apartment, and that the night before those sleeping arrangements had become just a little closer.
The drill noise started up, and Ishiah's smile turned into a wince. Of course, he'd also forgotten that Robin snored like a constipated moose.
If anyone had anything to say about it, Robin didn't snore at all, thank you. Robin twitched a bit in bed, trying to ascertain who was poking him this time. They never did like when he couldn't recall their name come morning.
But, oh. It was Ishiah, wasn't it? A completely different thing all together. Robin lazily turned over, but not before his eyes briefly scanned the clock. What time was it?
Eyes starting to droop, Robin mumbled, "Rest assured, I'm much better in bed than your infernal dog." A sniff and a twitch, a Robin attempted to get more under Ishiah's arm without making the downright vulgar mistake of actually looking like he was trying to do so.
"Now, what in the name of Ares' unimpressive dick are you doing awake at this hour?"
It was, rather notably, before noon.
Ishiah let his arm settle around Robin's shoulder, saving the Puck the effort of trying to establish that was what he wanted, without appearing to want it. This entire scenario was new (or so old that the rules had been forgotten), it would take time and talking to establish a comfort zone between them. Attempting conversation when Robin wasn't in the mood could be vaguely approximated to trying to teach a fish to knit, however. For the moment, this was comfortable enough.
"It's nine. I wake earlier than this when I'm working." he observed. He'd stop by the bar later and ensure it hadn't collapsed under the absence of his management, but Danyeal, Cambriel and Caliban were in truth more than capable of running the place unsupervised.
Nine AM. The tail end of rush hour and, now that Robin's earthquake of a snore had stopped, strangely quiet for a Manhattan morning. No car horns, yelling street vendors, gunshots (perhaps fewer of those in Chelsea). No street noise at all, in fact. The absence made the large apartment feel strangely hollow. An echo chamber.
Resting his head against Robin's, Ishiah stared up at the pristine ceiling. No mirror, at least. "You don't have this room sound-proofed, do you?"
For many reasons, including the keeping out (and in) of several unwanted noises, he wouldn't have been entirely surprised.
Nestling into a more restful state under the comfortable weight of Ishiah's arm, Robin decided to attribute the smile flickering across his face to his still being somewhat asleep. At least, that would be his defense, if it had to be.
"You really should stop racing the clock with roosters, Ishiah; you're in danger of proving freud right about that... cock envy." A snore, to punctuate.
Robin blinked a bit in, tying to ascertain what, exactly, Ishiah was asking, before giving up and deciding for him that for once, the Peri was being straight forward.
"No, of course not, then I'd be in terrible danger of ridding the world of the sounds of my frequent and various..." And then a confused look fell over Robin face. He stopped. Was he still allowed to say those things? Should he? Becoming bored with the shock of indecision, too, joining them in bed, Robin huffed a bit and simply let the incomplete sentence hang in the air.
"It's strange. I can see your mouth moving and yet you still appear to be talking out of your posterior." Ishiah remarked drily.
Yes, Robin could still say those things. No, Ishiah wouldn't like them, but then he never had. The choice to stop saying them was Robin's, much as his was the choice to stop doing them. The possibility of that decision actually being made was enough to distract Ishiah into several moments of silence.
Enough, perhaps, to prove his point. "You may consider it an aberration to rise before lunch, but you'll find a significant portion of the City disagrees with you."
Manhattan. It never slept, but remained an early riser. Ishiah sat up, looking down at Robin. "Can you hear them?"
For that, Ishiah received a loud, long and punctuated snore. Maturity, thy name is Goodfellow.
In the wake of Ishiah's silence, Robin fell into a half-dream wherein Ishiah had become a sales clerk, and was trying to ring him up for the purchase of a penguin before Ishiah's words woke him into (mostly) full wakefulness. He pondered the question, listening, blinking his eyes through their decided request to stay closed.
He peered up at the Peri, "They're taking the day off. Maybe it's a holiday. Must you bother me infernally with petty details, you..."
Rolling over, it seemed his eyes had won in their battle to close again.
Never let it be said that it wasn't tempting. The warm bed, the warm body, curling up beside Robin and worrying about whatever might need to be worried about at some later time. There was the possibility of picking up where things had left off last night. Despite the snappishness of their words, that was tempting, too.
Bending down, Ishiah let his lips brush the jut of Robin's jaw, noting how even in repose his face never quite settled into innocence.
Then, because procrastination was an anathema to him, he shifted to the edge of the bed and tugged off the top sheet to wrap around his waist as he stood. Going to the window, he pulled back the curtains with scant regard for the Puck's preferred sleeping habits. Not that daylight would likely be much deterrent to his lie in.
...Though, something else might. At the window, Ishiah tugged open the latch and leaned out over the street. His wings flickered into slow-beating existence at his back, as though he might take flight any moment.
"Robin." Gripping the ledge, Ishiah's knuckles were white. "Robin."
"Robin, get up."
Another snore, to punctuate sudden discomfort. Lurching himself from the bed (because surely, if he did it slowly, he quite simply would've given up half way) Robin flounced across the apartment, minus sheets. Perfect as Zeus made him, Robin angrily grumbled "What?" before trudging to stand next to Ishiah, still grumbling under his breath while ducking around beautiful golden-white wings.
Robin looked out the window to see desolation. It looked as if some major deity had chosen to sit on Chelsea. Robin blinked in surprise, disbelief, something approaching panic, surely.
Some small voice in the back of his head shrugged it off. Well, he never really did like his neighbors, anyway.
Tone still tellingly incredulous, Robin gaped for a few more moments before whispering, "How did you sleep through that?" Because if it was anyone's fault, obviously, it would be Ishiah's.
"I haven't the faintest idea." While Ishiah's face retained all the usual cool detachment he had become so used to exhibiting in a crisis, his voice - quiet as a breath - held the same emotions so open in Robin's expression. He sounded, something rare enough as to be almost unheard of for him, lost.
He gestured toward a pile of rubble where luxury penthouses used to be, more familiar with ruins like these in the long abandoned places of Greece and Rome. "It's not an earthquake. The damage has been done by something above ground, not below. But--"
Pulling himself back from the window, he leant back against the wall beside it, wings still splayed wide. Easier to think when he didn't have to look. "Whatever this was, if it happened in the last few hours, don't you think there would be some kind of panic? Rescue attempts? At the very least, lines of traffic trying to get out of town."
He closed his eyes, pressing the heel of his hand against a crease slowly working it's way into his forehead. "Try turning on the news."
And Robin preferred not to think. Instead, he occupied himself with another task: searching aimlessly for the remote. Hoping it would distract him long enough while Ishiah thought of whatever it was that he was thinking of.
Because Robin would rather not think about all those dead, about where Caliban and the others are, about his contracts, acquaintances, much less the ruined mess that the lot surely is. And what if it was old news? Had they been, what, frozen in time? A spell? An illusion?
It was all too much, and so, Robin compacted it into something much smaller, poking around in sofa cushions while he tried to find the remote controller ...And, located it under a pillow near the coffee table! Robin switched the television on to his favorite news station; the anchors always sported low-cut blouses. Flipping through stations he found... static, static, white noise, more static.
Ishiah received a worried look, quickly covered up. "I have a sneaking suspicion that the newspaper, too, will be tellingly absent."
Setting his jaw, Ishiah nodded, curtly. "I wouldn't except this to be a priority stop on anyone's delivery route."
Not anymore. Ishiah picked up the cellphone he'd left on Robin's dresser, and found the signal register reading zero. He was wondering less about individuals (time for that later) and more about the city as a whole. Where was everyone. They'd both lived through greater crises than this (and his mind flickered for a moment to Pompeii, clouded thick with ash). No city, not even a neighbourhood, could empty itself so completely overnight.
Suddenly cold - the window was still open, the curtains blowing inward - Ishiah bent and started picking his clothes up from the edges of the bed, sitting down to pull on his jeans.
Robin simply 'hmph'ed and wandered off to find his clothes closet. Mercifully still in the state he'd left them, he had time to absentmindedly ponder what, exactly, had happened last night, besides a part of Chelsea deciding to imitate pancakes and New York, one of the business and commerce capitals of the world, to become a dead zone. Besides that. Them.
And then not. Robin focused instead on finding where his cuff links had wandered off to (dresser drawer, wrong box, not that there was really a system to be kept) and pondering taking a long, hot shower, possibly not alone.
But, inevitably, he was drawn back to Ishiah. "We'd best look around and see who..." or what, "is out there, if anyone."
"My thought as well." Ishiah decided not to clarify that, technically, his first thought had involved Robin staying here, where it appeared at least notionally safe. Another glance at the window disabused him of this theory; if they were going anywhere, it would be together. Not four days ago Robin had been at his last breath, and healed or not, Ishiah was in no mood to take chances over putting him back there.
"We can walk between here and the bar and see the extent of the damage. Then, if necessary, I can see about looking up contacts." St. Mark's place allowed Robin to check on the Leadros household, and Ishiah to ascertain who remained at his bar. The staff there - other Peri - would have stayed. If anyone had, they would.
Ishiah pulled a shirt over his head, and covered it with a grey leather jacket. "I'd suggest taking anything from here you think you'll need in the immediate future. In case it's not feasible to return."
Robin shrugged, noncommittal, before looking back out of the room to think... He could get more, and better, clothes; he always could. The flat screen TV was worthless, as was the stereo system and the stainless steel computerized refrigerator was hardly portable.
Fleetingly, he thought of demanding they drag the wall-sized mural from Pompeii across New York. But... no, that was far too pathetic a fate to suffer through.
Still staring at the mural, Robin mumbled, "Everything worth saving is too big to lug around Manhattan, and getting it smeared with debris would just depreciate the market value." A shrug. The specific tinge in his voice could be missed, or at least, ignored, if the listener so chose. "At your leave."
This listener rarely missed notes like that when they crept into the standard air of reassured nonchalance Robin usually sported. Ishiah patted himself down -- possessed of everything but his sword. Did he bring it? It seemed unreasonable that he wouldn't, after recent events, but something about that morning had left him disoriented and he couldn't be sure. Should the need arise, there seemed to be plenty of twisted metal on the street with which to make do.
Then, because he had neither missed, nor ignored the things that Robin didn't say, he moved to rest a hand on the Puck's shoulder. Drawing his gaze, hopefully, from the mural, and the memories. "We'll come back for what we can, as soon as we've found somewhere secure."
He didn't say 'safe'. Today, moreso than ever, the very word seemed like an illusion.
Robin just flicked the hand from his shoulder, wandering off towards the door. And elaborate 'right this way' gesture awaited Ishiah, Robin standing before him.
"After you."
A pause before he added, "We can stop by the dealership on the way, and see how many pieces it's in, and if that's the usual amount."
"Of course." After him, then. Ishiah hesitated as he passed Robin in the doorframe, drawn by the urge to step off the eggshells on which they were both treading and see how kissing him might diffuse the prickle of tension between them. Of course, it might as easily spark something worse. Now wasn't the time.
Ducking his head, Ishiah kissed him anyway. Brief, hard and determined, it sent a message that was easier to say without words, anyway. I haven't forgotten.
And he started down the stairwell toward the street outside.
Robin was, for a rare, fleeting moment, speechless. He leaned back on the door frame to touch a hand to his lips, as if inspecting for possible wounds left.
The look of surprise flickered into a smile, and then acceptance. Robin turned, grinning in a way that could only be described as smug, clicking a heel before following Ishiah down the hall, the stairs, out of the building.