∞ [ 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.

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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 from spirits have managed to pervade even his furthest extremities. Or maybe he's chosen not to mention it, swallowing up his discomfort as he would never swallow his pride, firm steps marching toward his chosen destination. It wasn't like he hadn't heard Peter's words, and surely he must have, considering that Peter's voice was the single sound against a vaulted midnight sky. But hearing wasn't equivalent to listening, and even with those words pointed at him, Amory chooses to step forth in ignorance, syllables as empty as the air that circles around him.

Suffocating.

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."

i buried it too deep under the iron sea;

[oshutup]

"I heard you," he replies, unperturbed by the anger, ever aware of the heavy anchor invisibly linked to it, dragging behind the harshness of consonants and vowels that aim only to discourage the outside force, which, at present, is Peter himself. Trading loose barbs for something of more stoic origin, the blond has noted that breath of a second only because in one lifetime he learned sometimes a breath of a second is all one has. So noted, he tailors his own tone, though that should not be misconstrued as veiling, less a matter of strategy and more one of accuracy to what he means to say. The bristling that happens at the category of 'kid', much like the breath of a glance is there too, but only for its own second. It may be enough to have been noticed, however.

"Somehow, your insults get less and less effective the more you try to use them," he informs rather than suggests, as if it is a fact, and as far as Peter can tell, personally, it might as well be.

i buried it too deep under the iron sea;

[fatespoken]

"And your attempt at playing adult gets less and less effective the more you try at it," he retorts, voice snapping back at a tempo that leaves no doubt to exactly what is fueling his venom. If not echoed in his voice, it's defined in his stance, shoulders drawn back and muscles rigid as he turns half-circle to face Peter. "Let me tell you something," he double-checks the enunciation of his words. None of that languid pronunciation for him; he won't drag his words through the mud until he has a few shots more.

"My father doesn't look a day over thirty-five, and trust me, I'm being generous. Do you know how old he really is?" a single step forward, "Two thousand ninety-one. But that's fucking irrelevant because to everyone else, he's barely out of his twenties. An adult back in his day, a relative youth in ours. Do you think everyone respects him? Do you think he's treated as he should be treated? Hardly."

He shakes of his head, stringing it onto another one of those dry, insipid laughs. In fact, Amory Felix lies. The way in which his father carries himself has always reflected years beyond his form; an unmistakable personage that has led both men and businesses throughout the folding of years. In the last three decades, he's played the role of a lawyer, a real-estate investor, a historian, and a winery owner, amongst other things and all at the same time. To claim that he hadn't garnered respect in each venue would be a blatant lie.

Of course Peter didn't need to know that.

i buried it too deep under the iron sea;

[orderofthelion]

A year ago, Peter would have punched Amory, more than once---well, to be more precise, a little over a year ago, a year and an unlikely rebellion and some months time ago. Looking at it now, it feels closer to a lifetime itself, the messy in-between stringing together an Age of Gold and his present period of grace. As the saying goes, however, that was then, and this is now; an over simplification to be sure, but it does the job, means exactly what it spells and nothing additional. It is that type of unencumbered candor that permeates itself through his entire frame, and keeps the temper he still has in comparative check. Helpful is the suspicion that Amory is too drunk to remember what anger the blond might have spared his way, and even more helpful still is that he would, as far as Peter can tell, never admit to being struck by any of his disapproval. He has shown that much, so far, but as it is, this is not one of the times that is about Peter's own age, which, though not irrelevant, is also just not the point of anything here at all.

Amory is taking wild swings, and as wild swings are wont to, they are missing even as they betray truths or at least half-truths about him that Peter knows he would not otherwise be privy to. Combination drunk and irritable and Amory; it's interesting, and it occurs to the High King that, like most people who he has seen vest themselves in a character that shields another reality, the bartender carries some mix of fear and bitterness, the kind sometimes born of disappointment and more often of hurt. He has no hard copy history to back up the inferences, but not all of the things he learned in Narnia had to do with aptly wielding a broad sword or politely refusing courtiers, so on and so forth. Much of it is just the kind of thing another person can and has in their own life learned on Earth or a distant star.

It has to do with people, and that broad of a statement has a frightening amount of context and content that can get involved, but suffice to say, that for all his sometimes-social dryness, private shadows are no stranger to him. Besides, it is not as though Amory has made any particular secret of his drinking. Peter was honest when he said he was not the only one who had noticed, the difference being that he has been one to speak to it, not in small part, he would admit, because he prefers to have their competent barkeep...well, competent.

"That is something," he half nods and half sighs, a casual thread to those three words that keeps it from being something that could be mistaken for mockery, but again he does not make any move to call off his intervention, rare but fully invested. It is possible--it is likely--that a secret part of him (even secret from Peter himself, the eternal subconscious of his oldest and youngest moment) recognizes that it matters to let someone know they are being noticed, that the actions they take have consequences and that someone else is going to mind about it, even if the doer himself does not, or, more accurately, professes not to. Such is something of the matter here, and anyone who knows the eldest Pevensie sibling could tell anyone else: when he gets an idea into his head, when he decides something, he is immovable enough, come armies or, as is the case now, Amory.

i buried it too deep under the iron sea;

[fatespoken]

Peter's age may not be the immediate point of the conversation, but as haphazard dots and patterns often interlock themselves with independent circumstances, it certainly has become a point. Currently, it's the sharp-tongued spur lodged in Amory's temper; venom brimming beneath anger, delineated in a smoldering scowl layered against sheets of night. It's a look perfected and practiced, measured and utilized in only appropriate circumstances, choice situations, which make it one of the rarer entries in Amory Felix's catalog of evil eyes. For the mere act of advising him-- guidance, advice, suggestion, direction, being amongst a category of nouns that will always drag him along kicking and screaming. He hates being told what to do. He hates being advised, especially by one who's face still echoes angles of youth, the softer curve of a cheek unpressed by time- features that even the older one is criminal of. Amory isn't that much older physically, but those few years mark an important difference. Important, in the sense that even as his manager, even as someone mentally older, Peter has no right to tell him to go home. It's an upturn of that age-old phrase "Respect your elders," incorporated into the set of values that order his pride.

When off work, Peter Pevensie has no rule over him.

"You have no right to advise me. No right to tell me to go home," he sucks in a breath of air, a tempered space between silence and rancor that continues to fight its way through. A showcase of anger won't lose the King, nor will derision, and Amory feels the last ends of his nerves snapping, dissolving into the miasma of his cresting nausea and temper.

"Just be quiet, Kid."

i buried it too deep under the iron sea;

[orderofthelion]

It is something that Peter Pevensie has any rule over Amory Felix at all, work or not, really, just saying. Very interesting. But again, with no particular aptitude for that niche of telepathy, well, it's fortunate for the barkeep that Peter thus misses out on this likely inadvertent note of admittance. This is not, as far as Peter is concerned, of much immediate importance, however.

"Perhaps not," he admits, almost too amiably. "But that won't stop me, no more than someone's advice will stop you from running head first into whatever is that's bothering you." To Peter, that is what it seems that Amory is doing, avoiding, avoiding, avoiding, but avoidance only works for so long before, like most things under tension, the thread snaps and frays beyond repair. It is something worth worry, worth the act of running metaphorically into a wall face-first over and over with the hopes of changing anything at all.

And Peter does not like to idle away when action is an alternative. Not all action garners desired results, and some ends up without any results entirely, but the adage of never knowing until one tries applies here in full. For all their often mutual dryness, wryness, and the unspoken, unwritten agreement to give each other generous berths of personal space, this does not automate out all traces of care and good intention. Certainly, the High King never gives word to it, but that can be said of his care for even the people closest to him. Bypassing the talk, there remains only the thing of making something happen, or keeping it from happening.

Tonight, he supposes, is a little bit of both.

i buried it too deep under the iron sea;

[fatespoken]

He tastes it even before the words slip, silver glancing across his tongue to gather in the blunt ridges of his molars. It’s like the tang of metal, a simile that carries equal force in the distribution of weight over his shoulders, a lead-lined mantle. In usual succession follows the cold, spreading like the cob-webbing of ice through muscles and veins. Stereotype says it should be warmth, as if the mind’s image of energy as activity, like the many moving parts of a machine, inspires the same in the preternatural sense. It’s more the sensation of frozen hands against bare flesh, whites of a nail’s edge lodged deep into skin. Why the sensation feels as it does, Amory has no explanation, even wondering once if it was the transliteration of a metaphorical burden. A constant that reminded men who held the infinite in their palms that they were still only men. Or it could be a warning call for what's about to happen. For the wall is crumbling, chunks and bits and pieces of power, of magic as people like to call it; a thin stream at first but crashing through suddenly as a tidal wave.

"You think you're an adult. An adult stuck in the body of a brat. But it's all pointless. You're not King, Pevensie. You're not even a man, no matter the truth. No one sees that, all they see is what you appear to be." he breaks off, severing his words with contained laughter, "You should just forget about all that. Forget about Narnia, forget about being a man. You're just a fucking kid."

He's too muddled to notice the thread snap, gathered pressure sinking back as suddenly as it came. It now rests behind the tired walls, but the deed has already been done, and the deed is irrevocable.