∞ [ action post ]

[fatespoken]

✏ LOGGING: This is your thread for logging, whether spontaneous or plot-related, silly or serious. His normal haunts include shifts at the Blue Light, various city bars, cafes, random encounters, etc. Prose preferred, [] are fine too.

✉ TO SET UP: Just drop me a line at aeloriax[at]gmail.com or Y!M/AIM (listed in the post below) to give me a

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i buried it too deep under the iron sea;

[fatespoken]

The weak glow of light from the off-centered ceiling lamp allows the shadows to tuck the booth into a dark corner. They eclipse the table in shades, catching in the rise and hollows of Amory's face, draped severely against the depressions under his eyes. Single movements of the hour hand had tread their marks, but this was not anything unusual-- insomnia wasn't the right word for it, he would say. Others would claim it so, but Amory would purport volition. It was his decision to stay up with the midnight hours, sitting out the tapping of thoughts until they quieted away. Rumination with frayed edges was born nightly, as was often the case with the human psyche, carrying their worries with loud voices-- recent events like the fear of leaving or the heavy weight of particular curses, but Amory celebrated the occasion, made a ritual of it with a toast and ten more. He could have slept, he should have slept, but there was better escape with practiced indifference and a touch of alcohol. A touch, says the seventh shot of Bacardi 151 in his

i buried it too deep under the iron sea;

[oshutup]

No one should still be at The Blue Light, and Peter pauses in the back hall, his own quiet-enough footfalls stilling to silence as he listens to the recognizable clink of a glass, the kind that says a bottom edge has just been knocked absently against a tabletop or counter in being drawn back up for another usage. He has one guess to make as to the not-so-mysterious personage present at this too-late hour, and his guess is more a certainty even before he sees the reputedly and proven surly bartender taking what could be his first shot but probably is not. Blue eyes do not quite hood; nor do they narrow, but the scrutiny makes itself known in other ways, not thick like a weight and not thin like a twig bound to snap at a returning look, much closer to something tempered in between--a blade's finer edge

i buried it too deep under the iron sea;

[fatespoken]

But there aren't words for the uninvited guest, the light shuffling of cloth greeting the blond as Amory jumbles through his right pocket for some object of interest. A click, a snap- a flare sparks the cigarette now set thinly between his lips, head angled upward up so that the white smoke ascends in loose spirals toward the ceiling, dark light choking out the gauze cloud as it acquiesces to the negative. Words unspoken didn't account for his expression, though vague enough as it was with irises hanging toward the bottom of his sclera-- observing the blond, watching him, perhaps forming proper words of retort and vitriol as the intruder deserved. Though whether such acerbic remarks would leave any impression on the stoic king had to be questioned; perhaps he would just shrug it off, counter his words with the cold hardness that is nonchalance. Though Amory might well be copying the blond's demeanor, or at least three quarters transposing it, with back also leaning against the seat, expression muted with indescribable contours. There

i buried it too deep under the iron sea;

[oshutup]

He half snorts at the other man's words when they escape him at last. It is only half a snort because it gets cut off by a mild noise of disapproval at the stewing rebellion in the form of dilapidated ash and a smoothly rattling attitude. Truly, Peter has no special objection to people and their vices because what a man does with his own time and his own money are, as can be concluded, also his own business. That fine print gets dense down the way of course, when said man brings it into the public domain, and The Blue Light is quite public for all that it harbors something of a homey undertone people flock to it for, a casual understanding between friends as if each patron is the first friend and the bar itself is the second and everyone around them the so on and so forths

i buried it too deep under the iron sea;

[fatespoken]

The probability of him lying has always had the habit of leaning toward higher percentages, even more so at this moment, when his words slide sideways out without much regard to form or veracity. He plucks the syllables from thoughts that skim the surface of his conscious, jumbled and frenetic as smudged veins of alcohol break apart rationality. His words, or in this case, scrambled sense, likely are falsifiers on the tip of his tongue. Nevertheless, the history Amory recites is true as far as can be seen, the repository of antiquity and useless knowledge within that corridor of his mind left untarnished, though it's only because of the Once-King-Now-A-Boy that his recollection is brought forth. With invisible trappings and aged dust encompassing him, Pevensie is half-way anachronistic to this world, and Amory can observe it, just as he recognizes it everyday when he works beside him. But liquor has only the eyes to see the youthful features of his face, the soft mold of childhood that marks Peter as one physically entering the

i buried it too deep under the iron sea;

[oshutup]

With some people, there is the appeal of potential shock or providing--at the very least--the less expected of two possibilities. In this case, Peter feels that Amory is more likely to assume he will decline the offer that sneaks just under animosity but not quite around distance, and if he was younger, or if he was simply feeling younger, he might give himself over to such mild reasoning and partake. As it stands, he isn't, so he shakes his head once before sliding the pack back across the tabletop, flicking the lighter up between thumb and middle finger to eye it before proceeding to do the same as with the remaining health risks. Not that he's above smoking itself. Hardly, but it's never taken his particular fancy, not yet anyway, though he supposes if he had come to be this age back in England it might have become one. Enough boys and men--and some women--have told him the same kind of thing: it calms the nerves...or at least wears them so thin you don't remember they're there. Something like that. It doesn't work that way for

i buried it too deep under the iron sea;

[oshutup]

"Anyway," he pauses, lips pressed thin for a moment, a bubble of thought anchoring itself in the flyaway striations of each iris. "Doesn't matter what you think of what I think. What I know," another pause but he does not change his casual lean. "...What I know is that you have been drinking more and more lately." He does not feel it necessary to say what he does not know, because the obvious is self-explanatory: he doesn't know why. It has not been his business--he has decided several times now--to do much more than sometimes vaguely play the role of chaperon to the other man's apartment, and at other times to simply send him a look that says he is being observed and thus noted, which in and of itself can often serve as enough of an impetus for someone to stop out of sheer desire to be contrary. Tonight it is his business. Tonight they are seated as perceptibly civil beings, a pocket of dry humanity that needs no crowd to prove it is there. This public bar has become private in its own way, and though Amory makes what Peter would say

i buried it too deep under the iron sea;

[fatespoken]

Peter should learn to channel that attention into someone more deserving; someone who would be willing to release those gates to whatever tepid waters lurked beneath darkened stares and bored-out words. For even if the High King must be used to bearing onus, and a weighty onus at that if history read its inscriptions properly, dealing with Amory must still be akin to beating down a titanium wall with a stick. A waste of time. Any time spent on him a waste, just as time spent on another is a decay of seconds. Nevertheless, Peter has found some sliver of reason to bother him, perhaps boredom, maybe entertainment, or even some pathetic mimicry of court. The Royal Court of the Goddamn Blue Light. Each server and bartender a translation; a flimsy, paper-thin parallel of some loyal subject requiring council. A king in search of his grandeur and dominion amidst wooden booths and a plebeian milieu

i buried it too deep under the iron sea;

[oshutup]

Pinning bloody carcasses to anything, much less men, Peter deems inhumane, among other things. Never mind who the carcasses are being pinned to, or what, but think of the pinning folk. What does that kind of action do to them? How does it change them? He cannot fathom a single good thing from the consideration. Unable to read minds, however, this is not a conscious inability, his attentions geared more toward the dry turning of the drunkard's voice and how he seems to wish to slip himself into that tone and disappear into public privacy. His words that follow, to the point and certainly familiar, confirm that much.

"I would, except that you are treating The Blue Light not unlike your personal lounge, which, even in the after-hours, I have to point out, it is not." His tongue clicks at a corner of his mouth, fingertips pointedly not tapping in any especially inferential rhythm. "If you truly wanted to be left alone, I think that you would take your company," a nod to the shots, "in actual privacy." That is not entirely accurate.

i buried it too deep under the iron sea;

[fatespoken]

Of being a creature of material substance; of blood, and bone, and imperfect nature, Amory Felix is anything but inhuman, and thus hardly exempt from the flaws that dictate him as such. As a being that will do a variety of idiotic things under the disillusion that they're truly proper and most of all, right. Though he may be too stubborn to come to that realization, Amory wouldn't disagree he was human. He would fight it to the ground, sword and shield his tongue and temperament, defending those fissures that vein every time he asks himself that perennial question -- does he count for human? But nature and demeanor are stronger than the composition of blood, or rather, human nature is not so conclusively human. And amongst his collection of faults, drinking is an exception. It is an exception because Amory knows the cause. The reason. The why. The proof. He over-drinks with full intent in mind, not because of the acidic tang on the back of his throat or the rush, but because of the numbing of just those thoughts and insecurities.

i buried it too deep under the iron sea;

[oshutup]

This time, Peter does not offer to see the other man home, but that is only a way of cutting out a supplementary step, skipping on to simply deciding to help him at least a majority of the way there

i buried it too deep under the iron sea;

[fatespoken]

Spoken words are not necessary for Peter himself to become an even greater annoyance, as his presence beside him-- the fact that there's a living, breathing body shadowing him sideways, hanging upon him as if he's teeth deep in his skin like a goddamn bloody leech, is enough to drive Amory further up that wall. His temper has always been touchy thing, and even more so when he's inebriated, unable to divide innocuous circumstances from their malignant siblings. Peter could have raised a sword to his chest, and Amory would have found it as irritating as being followed. Or so he thinks. Probably not if that circumstance was truly the case, but then again, Amory isn't exactly connecting point A to point B right now. Deductive and inductive reasoning can all go to hell

i buried it too deep under the iron sea;

[oshutup]

...

Well.

If Amory hopes to lose Peter through way of a median between walking and jogging, Peter will give him the benefit of the doubt, or would if he could read minds, and credit it to the drunken stupor. Okay, well, second thoughts being second, maybe he wouldn't, but the world will never know for certain. Still, his general feeling would be that no one should be able to lose anyone at such a median, save for, perhaps, people without legs. Also babies

i buried it too deep under the iron sea;

[fatespoken]

Remember, Peter. With all the alcohol that's seeped into his brain, including a glass or four he may have had prior to sitting down, it's lucky that he hasn't taken the immediate action of falling flat on his face. (Though that would have made lovely picture on the employee of the month wall, assuming that they had one.) Being able to actually determine a destination, to decide between two ends-- the Colosseum before home, is a testament to his micrometer of lucidity. But that micrometer isn't enough for him to acknowledge that his pace is relative to snail's pace, if we're talking about a game of pursuit and capture. The point remains that he hasn't fallen on his face. Yet.Speaking about the winter's chill, Amory's own shoulders are thinly sheltered aside for his only long-sleeve layer. What may be a brisk wind to Peter, is likely a biting chill for Amory, cold pricking against skin not yet accustomed to an winter as season. It's either that his brain is too preoccupied with trying to forge sense from pink elephants, or that warmth

i buried it too deep under the iron sea;

[oshutup]

That the other man turns to go without a word is not surprising, but Peter finds reason enough to follow even still, lips pressed in a thin line characteristic of a majority of his expressions, even some of his smiles, not that he wears one now. Amory's insistent silence does nothing to dissuade the High King from his decided pursuit, eyes never wavering from the focus even as he reconsiders his own words, shaping and reshaping, thinking and rethinking.

"Amory." It is only a name, but sometimes a name is everything. A name can be stop and a name can be please and a name can be listen. A name can be anything as soon as everything, in fact, and so it holds that semblance now, anchored between them like a line that loops two separates together until they appear circular and seamless, not separate but integrated, involved. If he needs a word for what he has chosen to be, Peter supposes 'involved' might very well do.

i buried it too deep under the iron sea;

[fatespoken]

Just as his voice frames the air, the High King's presence is the center-point of this landscape; all color, sound, and light as amorphous figures suspended in suffocation by the ink of the hour. Amory can't ignore Peter regardless if ignorance is what he chooses, for as long as those assured lines of his character remain, Peter would never be a person capable of simply being ignored. It is why Amory hesitates, only for a breath of a second, his head edging over his shoulder to catch Peter's glance- the narrowing of his eyes intercepting Peter's characteristic thin-lined look.

"I told you once already," he speaks, the tone of his voice stretched taunt, then tightening into contracted sound. It seems to be only anger, but how strangely it carries itself with a weight that seems possibly palpable. "I told you I don't need your help, kid. Fuck your concern and all your damn insistence. Fuck you, Peter Pevensie."