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Character of the Season
Once known as the Butcher of Whitebrim, he's now The Butcher of Dygra, stepping forward as the first created demigod of the Ancients. There is no question that Astaroth casts an intimidating silhouette. Tall, domineering and dangerous, if looks could kill you'd be dead already, but to get up close and personal with the Grounds' resident cannibal tells a much different story. Dripping with charm and clad in only the finest attire, Asta is a gentleman monster, as polite as they come and committed to his role as security for the Dusklight and those who have earned his loyalty. Be careful of that smile, though - those teeth are sharp.
Congratulations, Asta!
Credits
Court of the Fallen was created in October of 2018 by Odd, Honey, and Crooked.
OG Skinning provided by Kaons, with functionality and many custom plugins made by Neowulf!
The unintentional rebuke crashes into Casimir like a brutal punch to the sternum, knocking the wind out of him and causing the big man to bodily flinch like he had actually been struck. Hurt, a fear, and a hint of panic flash over his face before he schools it back into his neutral mask, but his chest heaves slightly and his fingers curl into clenched, anxious fists where they hang by his side.
He thought— he doesn’t know what he thought. There was a small bloom of hope and wistfulness in his chest when Thorn’s face had lit up upon receiving the washcloth, and he stupidly thought perhaps it had meant the courtesan had heard all his silent apologies throughout the evening. His actions — violent, giving, stupid, whatever — had always spoken much louder than his words (or lack thereof). It was self-centered for him to think that someone like Thorn, so bawdy and open, could understand him.
His fingers ghost the doorknob, the metal biting and cold under the tips of his fingers. Thorn seems to have melted into the comfort of his room, letting it reclaim him in its homey splendor, and Casimir feels himself sticking out like a big brown spider in a lush garden. The invitation to stay is contrasted by the harsh, toneless murmur it came out in, and the rebuke is clear. He should go. Thorn wants him to go.
He doesn’t want to go.
Carefully, he ghosts to the corner of the bed, sinking down to perch as little of himself there as possible. The cushion of it sinks under him, an unstable life raft on a stormy sea, unmooring his senses slightly. It’s just until Thorn sobers up a little, just to make sure he doesn’t fall asleep on his back or smothers himself with a pillow. Then he’ll ghost away (to Halo), and Thorn will be better off.
So busy attempting to put himself in some semblance of cleanliness to ensure he doesn’t get the grime of the past few days all over his bed, Thorn completely misses the flinch that reverberates through the bartender. The brush is set off to the side and his hands run through his hair, pulling it back out of his face, half expecting Casimir to leave.
But the bartender doesn’t. And Thorn suddenly realizes when Casimir approaches that he’s still here, his face breaking into that vibrant smile yet again. He doesn’t get comfortable yet, but he does resign to perching on the edge. Thorn reaches down to untie his boots, kicking them off and rising to tug his shirt off of his head. All tattoos are on display again, curving around his hip and disappearing below the waistline of his pants.
“Thanks for stayin’, Cas.” He says softly, sucking in a sharp breath and looks over at Casimir, shuffling a smidge closer to collapse in against the bartender’s side. He’s too drunk to notice what exactly he’s up to, how it might affect the bartender. All he cares about is sitting this close, soaking up the warmth radiating from his muscles, breathing in the scent of bourbon and cinnamon like it’s oxygen.
When Thorn sits up to remove his boots, shoulder brushing up against Casimir’s, Casimir doesn’t think he could panic any more than he is right now. Then Thorn’s shirt gets pulled over his head, exposing a surprisingly muscular chest decorated completely in tattoos, and he thinks his brain breaks clean in two.
If Thorn were to look up from his cozied perch pressed up against Casimir’s side, he would see the bartender’s face redder than perhaps it has ever been before. He is, to put it scientifically, freaking out. His eyes unintentionally flicker downward to study the intricate patterns of tattoos adorning his chest, seeing the way they tangle together and then disappear down his waistband. And then he’s very carefully not looking, tearing his eyes away and examining the extremely interesting patterns on wood on the doorframe. That’s much better. Much more interesting than the curve of Thorn’s chest, bare and unexplored like untold wonders, a treasure map aching to be read.
It took him everything not to shift away and let the man’s exhausted body slump to the bed as he fled the House of Midnight and changed his name. The courtesan doesn’t smell of his usual mix of floral perfumes and scents, instead giving off the smell of something rich and earthy and vaguely horse-like. He should probably try and convince Thorn to take a shower, knew the man would thank him for it in the moment, but he thinks if he caught a glimpse of Thorn’s body shining and damp from the shower he couldn’t handle it.
Thorn’s exhausted, obviously so, and seems to want his body against Casimir’s for whatever reason. It would only make things worse if he tired to talk right now or apologize for That Night or try to make things right. Wouldn’t it be better just to be the thing Thorn needs him to be in this moment? Carefully, he lifts a hand, the one closest to Thorn, and rests it gingerly on the man’s knee.
Honestly, if Casimir moved even in the slightest of ways like he was going to escape, Thorn would – in his deliriousness – latch onto him and not let him go. But, as the bartender stays and the courtesan leans against him, soaking in his warmth and heat, Thorn feels himself slowly beginning to nod off. It’s a short little burst, giving Casimir ample time to study the vines that race up his sides, curve toward his chest in looping flowers, then curve back in a spread that curves both to the front and the back of his body. It tucks away in the waistband of the front of his pants, as well as behind in a kind of floral tramp stamp.
He isn’t paying attention to it, though. He’s, instead, focused on the scent of the bartender and how it soothes him. It’s comfortable, normal, relaxing in ways he can’t accurately express – like it’s the perfect subconscious reminder of That Night, and the courtesan selfishly laps it up like a dehydrated canine.
Thorn doesn’t fall asleep for long, though he slumps a little harder when he feels the warm weight of Casimir’s hand on his knee. He half curls in, absolutely passing out for a grand total of probably ten minutes or so before he wakes up again – some of the alcohol and the exhaustion having worked its way out of him with the power nap. He reaches up to rub at his eye, blinking up to see Casimir still there and that bright smile flicks back into place.
“Sorry, I dunno why I’m so fuckin’ tired.” He does, but he’d thought he could handle it better than he had. It’s his way of trying to alleviate just how weak he suddenly feels, especially sitting here half curled up against the bulk and muscle of the stony bartender. “You’re so warm. S’nice.”
Casimir doesn’t realize Thorn is asleep until soft exhales of breath leave his mouth at a level, even rate, almost snoring as the air rattled through his throat. Casimir is too busy freaking out and panicking to notice, but once he does, it inspires even less of an ability to calm down. His heart begins to race so loud he thinks Thorn must be able to hear it and will wake up, which causes his heart to race even more, on and on until the loop of panic closes so tightly his brain just completely jumps ship and fills itself with the white noise of nothing in particular.
To add salt in the gaping and bloody wound in chest, the moment before Casimir realized Thorn was using his body as pillow, he had determined to gently extract himself from the room and excuse himself. He had reasoned Thorn was too out of his right mind to want Casimir’s company, especially after that cutting rebuke from earlier, and it was really the only correct thing to do to excuse himself and return when Thorn was in his right mind (or maybe never). When the man goes completely limp under him, though, Casimir freezes so utterly and completely one could have mistaken him for a statue.
Is Thorn insane? Or just stupid? Has he forgotten what Casimir did to him the last time he had touched the bartender gently? Or has his mission with the unicorn simply given him a death wish? This is very bad. This is very bad. Casimir is going to give him nightmares just by his very presence, and Thorn would wake up with blood under his fingernails without knowing why, and—
Thorn shifts on his shoulder, just slightly, and Casimir holds his breath. He feels like a hapless human trapped by a dozing cat on his lap, unable to move out of fear of disturbance. When Thorn arises, hair sticking even further at odd ends than it had before his catnap, eyes slightly bleary and smile sweet, Casimir cannot physically look at him.
”Go shower,” He grunts and it’s the first words he’s said to the man since That Night and he’s already kicking himself for it, but if Thorn doesn’t take his body off of Casimir’s soon, he cannot be held for whatever destructive decisions he makes as a result.
It isn’t his intention to drive the bartender into a state of panic and dread, though apparently the courtesan is very good at it. Instead, Thorn pretends like everything is relatively normal. Like Casimir hadn’t kissed him and fled like his lips were poison, and that Thorn hadn’t been there the next day to prove that he did want to still see that stubborn glint in Casimir’s eye. It’s precisely what he wanted and what he gets as he looks up at the bartender, courting fire with the closeness of their bodies and how despite his exhaustion, he wants to curl up in the bartender’s lap like a cat and sleep till morning.
Or at least until he felt like he could function again.
For now, though, all he gets is the grunt of go shower, that comes out like an order – much to Thorn’s surprise. He doesn’t show it on his face, just huffs a soft sound like a tired laugh and withdraws from Casimir’s warm, inviting body that had become a makeshift pillow. “You gonna be here when I’m done or should I say my goodbye’s now?” He asks, raising a brow over at the man as he stands, stretches, and unintentionally gives Casimir a show of the vine tattoos that line his torso and disappear beneath the waistband of his pants to gods knew where.
He steps over to the edge of the bathroom but doesn’t slip into it yet, looking back at Casimir to wait for an answer because somehow he anticipates he won’t get a verbal one.
The absence of the heat from Thorn's body is as sudden as water dousing a roaring flame, and the withdrawal of it sends Casimir's body into a cold, frozen nothingness he didn't even know was possible for it to feel. It's a different cold from that corpse-like chill that thrums through his body so often, and the lack of heat stings worse than the addition of cold. He very carefully avoids looking at the lithe, lean lines of Thorn's tattooed as he stretches, keeping his cool eyes fixed deliberately now on the gleaming, tempting metal of the doorknob and not at that jungle of twisting plant life curving through Thorn's body.
He doesn't have an easy answer in the curve of his head when Thorn asks that question, lingering at the edge of the bathroom like there's something Casimir can give him other than the hurt he's already doled out. Though the question is aired curious and light, not like the sharp rebuke from earlier that still smarts against Casimir's memory, he thinks he senses another stab of resentment there, another reminder that Casimir had failed and ran and hurt him the last time he spoke. Another flinch, a small flicker of pain, spasms across his face. In the light of that rebuke, small or unintentional it may be, Casimir feels room close in on him slightly, pinioning him to his seat. He can't leave, not after that, can't shove that knife deeper into Thorn than he already had.
His head moves in a slight jerk, just a hint of a nod, spoken in that language Thorn is so adept in. Yes, he'll still be there.
His hand braces against the edge of the doorframe that leads toward the bathroom, his gaze flitting over his shoulder back at Casimir as he hesitates, waiting to see if it’s worth saying goodbye now or if the man might still linger here after Thorn’s back from the shower. And as he watches, waiting for that silent answer he’d get, Thorn’s lips curve into a small smile to see the short nod. His fingers tap the edge of the doorframe as he nods too. “Sounds good. Won’t take m’long.” He murmurs, before he slips away into the bathroom.
The door isn’t closed fully, cracked just a hair to let some of the steam out. And true to his word, the courtesan doesn’t take too long – just enough to clean the dirt and the muck away, to give himself some semblance of cleanliness in his sleep that feels inevitable with how exhausted his body feels.
It’s an exhaustion that stretches to his mind, too, and when the shower cuts off, Thorn dries himself off the majority of the way, winding the towel around him and emerges from the bathroom with red patchiness on his skin from where the hot water had hit. All smudges and dirt are gone, but the tattoos remain, as do the exhausted lilt to his posture.
He slips into the room, glances over to see where Casimir is, before he’s reaching for that hairbrush again to run through and pull his damp, wild hair back from his face – slicked back like it had been That Night. He turns back to Casimir, stepping over to get into his space a little more, a soft smile playing on his face. “Happy now?” He asks, a dark brow cocking with the question as if waiting for the judgement of how well he’d done after Casimir’s sharp little instruction.
He had lied before, actually. That wasn't freaking out. Every other definition, every other semblance of anything that could have been a freak out paled in comparison to the freak out Casimir has right now, internally, as Thorn waltzes out of the bathroom, body wet and slick from the hot water. Not that Casimir is looking, of course. His eyes move from the ever-fascinating doorknob to an even more interesting spot on that floor that practically yearns to be examined deeply and without a lapse in eye contact. Yes, this spot on the floor is wonderful, he'll keep looking at it forever.
Out of the corner of his traitorous eye, he can see the shape of Thorn brushing his hair back, glistening arms catching the light and highlighting the muscular curve under his tattoos just perfectly enough to get the bartender's stone heart racing. Despite his perennial pokerface, his utter mastery over his projected emotions, Casimir's face turns a pale shade of pink as he studies the floor. Thorn steps closer, close enough that Casimir thinks he can feel a warm radiance from his skin.
He thinks somewhere there's a God laughing at him. Perhaps Dygra, in her sensual delight in destroying all that's carefully made and cultivated, decided to wield her way on Casimir's tightly-wound self. He can't muster an answer to Thorn's question, not on a good day and certainly not while he's freaking out and avoiding dragging his eyes through the twisting tangle of vines to follow where they dip behind the towel. A new yearning, something he didn't know he still had in him (or, that's not true, he learned he had it on That Night, he's just trying to forget) wants his hand to ghost up and trace those patterns, letting his rough fingers linger on that soft, wet skin just to feel it and prove it's real.
His capacity to continue freaking out is stronger, though, and he stays where he is, perched on the bed, eyes determinedly down and jaw clenched.
He does notice the averted gaze, which feels a touch surprising to him considering what happened That Night. And maybe it should burn – maybe it does – in the recesses of Thorn’s chest cavity where he wonders if Casimir regrets it and just how much Thorn doesn’t. If anything, it only bolstered that residual feeling in his gut, the spark of a fire that started that he hasn’t been able to drown out, not even with the distance that time the past few days had spurred on.
Even now, standing as close to Cas as he is, his gaze remains down and his jaw remains clenched and Thorn is struck with a sudden impulsive thought that the courtesan can’t shake. He could be nice, let Casimir go free, pretend like he was just being nice and good and Thorn wasn’t quietly longing for the silent bartender. Like he hadn’t been constantly pining for him for years now.
He chooses the opposite, though. Traitorous in how he chooses the one that brings the fire. He’s a little more sober now after the show and the cat nap, though the exhaustion still lingers in his bones. He reaches up, long fingers, warm and still a touch damp brush along the bartender’s clenched jaw, trying to tilt his head up just a touch as the courtesan invades his space a little more. He didn’t get an answer about whether it was better or not, though Thorn doesn’t really care. Instead, he opts for a different question that is absolutely way different than the one that Casimir didn’t answer. “Stay with me?”
Thorn’s fingers are burning hot on Casimir’s chin, searing him as they guide his face upward to look at the beautiful courtesan. And Casimir, for all his muscles and brute, all his scars attesting to fights hard one, is weak. His head tilts upwards at Thorn’s guiding hands, meeting that seafoam gaze that always seemed to able to see right through him.
The question would have come barreling out of nowhere if it had not been circling them all evening, a carrion bird hunting for a meal. The whole evening has circled around stayings and goings, Casimir’s self-destructive desire to stay battling with his logic that demanded him to go. It seemed, now, Thorn was dragging it into light, demanding Casimir meet it and his eyes.
Casimir is frozen under Thorn’s touch breathing all but stilled, and though his instincts scream for him to look away, his eyes meet Thorn’s like he’s looking into the sun. It’s a question, and he could answer, knows what he should answer. But every choice he makes is always the wrong one.
”Tell me to,” escapes the cage of his mouth, low and rough, filled with gravel and laced with the thinnest thread of yearning.
Their eyes meet – and once again Thorn is reminded of seeing into the ocean. The way Casimir’s slate blues seem like they hold stories upon stories, each shift a different wave crashing against each other. And Thorn’s, meeting his the way he does, finds he can be the seafoam left behind in the rough choppy waves of Casimir’s. It’s a byproduct, one that Thorn doesn’t think too long about, not as he successfully keeps the bartender’s attention on him with a surprising amount of ease compared to Cas’ brawn.
The bartender could be stubborn, put his strength in response of where his words would be and Thorn wouldn’t have any success in getting him to do anything. But the fact that all it takes is a few fingers to nudge that handsome face up toward him, for Thorn to smile and ask his separate question, the gravel of the attuned’s voice is like music in how the courtesan revels in it.
“Stay.” He repeats, with no question this time. A demand rather than a request. The fingers still caressing the hard line of his jaw sweep back to the back of his neck, threading through the curls at the nape of his neck. He descends just enough to close the gap, to press a somewhat chaste kiss to the bartender’s lips, feeling the electricity spark within him and the way his stomach wills itself to do summersaults. He plays it cool, though, withdrawing enough to ensure that Casimir doesn’t have to feel trapped unless he wants to.
His other hand comes out, reaching for Casimir’s strong forearm, snagging with his long fingers and tugs him a little closer – no longer questioning. Just demanding. It seems like Casimir likes it better that way, at least.
The kiss is light but not hesitant, careful but not cautious, and the decisiveness in Thorn’s voice and the firm way he pulls Casimir closer works to dispel some of the panic lacing his veins. There is no ambiguity in the pull of Thorn’s hands on his forearm, in the way his fingers lace with his curls on the back of his neck, and streaks of sunlight begin to dapple through the clouds that have marred Casimir for so long. He allows himself to melt into the touch, loosening tense muscles that were ready to run at a moment’s notice, letting Thorn pull him closer into his space.
This still scares him, whatever this is, and common sense still informs him this is terrible and Thorn may have hit his head extremely hard on his quest. It’s harder to refuse, though, when Thorn is telling him he wants this danger. It’s harder to refuse when inches away from Thorn’s bare, open body, after days of thinking of nothing but him and how he would likely never see the man again. And worse, it’s harder to tell himself he doesn’t want the danger too.
Casimir moves the arm not grasped by Thorn’s warm, bare hand to reach up and ghost against his cheek, feather-light compared Thorn’s solid grasp on him. His stomach is roaring, heart beating, and he thinks of all his years wandering King’s End as a ghost, this is the most beautiful, living thing his cold eyes have set upon.
He tilts his head forward again, just slightly, just enough towards Thorn to act as an invitation. As a question. It’s half-promise, half-plea; I won’t run if you tell me not to. There’s something inside him wresting itself to the surface: something dangerous and alive.
His decision is bolstered as Casimir doesn’t pull away. There’s some surety in the way that the bartender doesn’t seem like he’s going to bolt again, and with the demand rather than the request, he wonders if that’s the catch all that Thorn should have been running with the whole time. It’s too late from That Night, though. He can pretend like this is a new day, however, one that might not go awry at every turn. One where he might be able to prove to Casimir that he’ll withstand the fire and blood and pain, because it wasn’t like Thorn didn’t have any of his own.
The one hand lifts to his cheek, though, featherlight and soft, warm and almost testing in the softness of it. Thorn blinks slowly, almost like a cat’s approval, meeting the tilt of the bartender’s head, feeling the way his stomach roars yet again in anticipation and excitement. Blood floods through his ears, hard enough that he swears Casimir might be able to hear it if he listened hard enough, but he doesn’t intend on letting them stay in this holding pattern.
He tugs him closer, shifting them so that Thorn can sit on the edge of his bed with him, towel still loose around his waist as he now pulls him down to claim another kiss – this one more encompassing, more devouring, more like the courtesan is staking a claim on whatever pieces of Casimir’s heart was left. A silent yet persistent I’m here, I’m not going anywhere.
The hand that had tugged at him sweeps up his muscular arm in silent appreciation, before sinking in to press and touch against the hard lines of his body, fingers twitching against them with bit back desire. “I missed you when I was gone.” The admission is soft, brushed against Casimir’s lips, stealing another small and short kiss after. “So we’re gonna redo That Night we were together ‘n make it better.” It’s not a question, again, more of a demand. An ‘I still want you’ that Thorn, true to his nature, is stubbornly gearing for, even if he can't quite find the words yet - wondering if somewhere down the line it's a little too much, too fast.
Gods know he doesn't want to spook him away again.
