then the riddle gets solved and you push me up to this

[caballero]

Who: Bruce Tom & Seoraj.
What: Camping, completely free of ulterior alibi motive.
Where: North of Flag Hill.
When: Beginning roughly on the 30th.
Warnings: Weirdness, violence, sexuality.

They leave early, because that's the tradition of camping - before dawn, as they have to make it up to the northern edge of the city proper first ("'Morning-") - the provisional shops built into the cliff face that hosts the treacherous ways up into the forests are helpful, the proprietors less so; that they generally profit off fools isn't anything they keep quiet. Bruce isn't bothered. Cold morning air and physical exertion with dirt under his hands makes some far-off part of him feel at peace.

It's just starting to become properly bright out when they reach the summit that'll lead them into the woods, and he takes a moment to stop and look out over the view of the city. Up here it's quiet, but not silent - it's not an absence of sound, but an absence of people, and looking down on Baedal from the vantage point of the highest natural point in the only landscape they have available makes it feel like another world.

Remarkable.

Comments

[caballero]

That the pain doesn't actually take the edge off for him probably (definitely) says more about Bruce than anyone really needs to know - fortunately he's got a bit better willpower than all that. Though he does let his hands linger on Seoraj's arms, if only for a moment.

"Well, you're pretty lucky."

Yeah, Seoraj, see what you get to deal with now? Sass.

[serjeant]

In that irritatingly laidback and honestly amiable way he has: “I am that.” ...which doesn't stop him from being slightly smug about it, actually, because yeah, he is feeling pretty good about himself right now, thanks for noticing.

[caballero]

Pleased enough (how did this happen?), Bruce smiles as he turns away, though whether or not he moved fast enough to hide it - well, he wasn't trying very hard. He wrangles a pair of shorts to wear, though seeing as he doesn't so much bat an eye at Seoraj's state (shut up), it can be assumed he just prefers having something on when he's sleeping. Maybe it has something to do with that whole control freak thing.

There's slight hesitation, then - and then he touches the other man with the back of his knuckles, slight, directing his attention minutely in a wordless query; sure they're behaving, are you going to enforce sleeping on difference sides of the bed here, or what?

[serjeant]

The answer to that is a definite if similarly unspoken no-- sex aside (at least for now) he prefers this intimacy, a sense of easy nearness. There's nothing awkward about the way that he gets into bed with Bruce or the way that he makes himself comfortable with him; at this point insisting on sleeping on opposite sides of the bed and keeping their assorted limbs to themselves would feel strangely impersonal, and impersonal isn't really something that he does. For a moment or a month or however long, he's just more at ease sprawled out like he belongs exactly where he is.

Figuratively speaking. Not always figuratively speaking.

(And it's still new territory; putting it into more familiar context helps.)

[caballero]

For Bruce this is only slimly familiar - he isn't a demonstrative person, with verbal or physical affection. This is something reserved for when he doesn't have to pick through every motion with such deliberation, that he wants but can't often reconcile. Vanessza may have learned by now that if she intimates he stay he will, but he doesn't presume, and certainly doesn't ask. The austere women he finds himself so often captured by still tend to bow without questioning to his closed-off whims.

But it's not like he's going to up and leave. He's practically cornered, with Seoraj, who doesn't seem like he'd mind anyway. So why the hell not.

Heartbeats after he's settled, he's asleep.