find out what's gnawing at me

i'm a thinker, not a talker

In the days after That Night, as Casimir had avoided calling it in his head, Thorn's absence hit him like a blade extracted from a bleeding and wounded gut. He had dragged himself out of bed the next day prepared to have to evade Thorn, outrun and outfight his own feelings of horrible guilt and disgust with himself and still hold strong against the onslaught that would the gentle look in his eyes and the downset curve of his mouth. Thorn hadn't been there, though, hadn't been lounging on the bar like he's so like to do or poking fun at the other courtesans or using his wiles to allow a patron to fall in love with him and follow his beckoning finger up the stairs. 

Casimir's glower in the following days had been more poisonous than usual, eyes flinty and hard and communicating less than it was somehow even possible to do. Everyone gave him a wide berth, and when a customer ordered a drink, it would land brusquely and silently in front of them accompanied by the least friendly-looking bartender they have the misfortune of encountering. The going rumor was that he had killed someone, and the second-most-whispered theory being that his underground fighting ring (which he totally, definitely had) had been broken up by Sunjata. 

None of it mattered. With Thorn gone, he didn't have to worry about fleeing, and if the man did return, he'd shift into a spider and skitter the hell away for good. 

It's another dark, freezing day in King's End, the warm lights of the House of Midnight providing the only warmth around for miles. The night was busy and bustling, the fireplace roaring, and Casimir stood his typical post behind the bar. He really was trying not to look "murderously unapproachable," as one of the other bartenders cracked before retreating a safe distance, and likely not succeeding, as everyone who ordered a drink from him collected it and moved elsewhere for their conversation. There were no courtesans in sheer clothing and dappled in twisting shackled vines hanging on his bar, poking the stony bartender for any kind of reaction. There were no sounds of laughter, no heads thrown back in delight, no seafoam eyes looking at him. 

It was for the best. Thorn had figured out what he was and he had left. It is for the best. Casimir's hands mechanically dry off a set of glasses while his mind wanders into the blissful nothing that came from hours of mindlessly working his job.

Casimir

i've no one to talk to, anyway

// i saw the walls, finished and plain //

It was such unfortunate timing that the herding adventure had to happen the next day from That Night. He hasn’t wanted to vanish on Casimir the way he had, but he’d also found himself relieved to an extent that he didn’t have to face the consequences of it so quickly after it had occurred.

It’s been days by the time the courtesan returns to the House. He isn’t dressed in his sheer and nice clothing, he isn’t wearing his easy smiles and bright eyes. He wears a coat of exhaustion, made of wool that hangs along his shoulders, a hat that’s absolutely fucked up his hair in the process, dark jeans that had given him room to move and not get stuck to things like his leather pants would have.

A bag hangs from his shoulders with the items from the trip, dark smudges on his cheeks because he hasn’t had a chance to shower yet. It calls to him, though, the siren song of his bed as opposed to the hard ground of the tents, the shower that promises warmth and heat to chase the bone deep cold away.

But he doesn’t head there first, sure that it’s late enough (what is time, anyway?) that he might be able to miss a specific, still handsome bartender. He doesn't even care to look as he makes his way through the entry, guided on familiar feet to the bar to the space that’s open, a yawning divide between the ends of the bar. He should know or at least assume there’s something fucky with it, but he’s too tired to care. Instead, the bag thunks underneath the edge of the bar by the stool and the courtesan hops up onto the seat, shrugging aimlessly out of his coat to let it pool down by his boots and bag. It’s a rather modest shirt underneath, form fitting and buttons up with designs of little cactuses intermixed in the light green fabric. But Thorn pays it all little mind as he starts to take his hat off.

“Can I get an’ old fashioned or somethin’? Extra strong?” He asks, expecting it to be one of the other bartenders that harbored far less snark. But as the courtesan sets the hat down next to him on the bar and his gaze flits up, they widen with surprise. They’re not surrounded in the kohl liner of before, the sparkle of his attire and energy decidedly gone, but his lips do quirk into a small smile.

Relief, in a way. “Nice seein’ you again.” He says rather than what comes to mind — I’m sorry I drove you away and just vanished right after.

Hawthorn

// lavender blooms on the ink of my name //

i'm a thinker, not a talker

At the sound of the familiar drawl, Casimir freezes, breath hitching in his chest. He tries to avoid the source of it, half-convinced it’s some awful hallucination his horrible mind has concocted, but his eyes can’t help but flick upwards in that same instinct that draws horrified gazes to life-ending wounds. To any other patron, Casimir would have appeared the picture of collected coolness, gaze steady where it met Thorn’s exhausted eyes. Only the most practiced in the art of reading the slight changes of his face would notice the way his eyes widen just slightly and his hands begin to tremble as he makes the old-fashioned (extra strong).

He tries not to stare out the corner of his eyes as he works, but he’s never seen Thorn without his decorations and accoutrements before, and he looks… young. Tired and worn, clearly, the bags under his eyes and dark smears on his cheeks telling a story of a long journey. But, even though his body is devoid of the usual accessories that draw attention to his lithe, supple (no, don’t think that like) form, Casimir can’t stop looking anyway.

He should run, right? He should fake a heart attack and skitter out of there before he could find a way to hurt Thorn worse than he already did. Instead, he slides the old fashioned across the counter wordlessly (as if there was any other way he could do it) and taps the counter twice, like he always does for Thorn. There’s something like apology in the drink’s quiet slide, his shoulders firm and tense in that way that projects a fighter preparing to throw up their guard in any minute.

His head jerks in a tiny nod of greeting instead, eyes both soft and guarded, and he hopes Thorn doesn’t take his silence for rejection. There’s a little strand of his wild hair sticking up at a particularly ogg angle and the bartender resists the urge to smooth it down. Casimir begins to drift away from that spot at the bar under the presence of needing to collect an empty cup at the absolute other end, quiet and still and lifeless as the ghost he swears he is.

Casimir

i've no one to talk to, anyway