For whatever reason the inky darkness that clung to the bedroom in a thickness not unlike the ridiculously expensive curtains that hid the rambling sprawl of beach outside the wide glass windows suddenly felt heavy and oppressive. Mean.

The pounding of waves.

The lashing of the pre-dawn downpour.

The ticking of the over-sized timepiece in the hall.

Everything was too stop-clocking, godsbedamned loud ... but not quite as loud as the painful, terrible buzz of the ugly hangover that roared angrily between Corwynn's temples. He obviously shouldn't have been awake. Sleep was surely still called for as his senses were dull, groggy, aching in rebellion, screaming to not be conscious. Gods, they'd all[ gotten guttered last night. Sloshed beyond remembering those last several rounds of cards or how many coins he'd parted with on the table. Whacked past having any idea when he'd left, how he'd gotten home, or whom he'd managed to drag along with him. Plum clocking sunk like a Drain ship somewhere off the coast of those succulent Muluku Isles in a brilliant blast of canon fire unrivaled under the stars—

There was breathing.

Something warm, just out of reach.

Well then, he'd at least brought someone home ... though any of what that had exactly entailed was like a bullet hole in his memory, gaping and empty.

The gunman groaned incoherently, a louder-than-intended string of jumbled words that may have loosely resembled curses had they made sense, unwilling to even attempt opening his eyes, let alone moving.

For a panicked moment, Charlie thought he'd brought someone home. Then he realized the sheets were clean and didn't have any holes in them and the pillows and mattress still had all their stuffing. Not his bed, then. Good.

There was a pounding in his head that seemed to be timed with the ticking of a clock somewhere. He had been abso-godsdamn-lutely hammered the night before, and he was vaguely regretting it now. Though-- he rarely showed up in a bed that wasn't his own unless something good had happened to him. Something he was having trouble recalling very clearly, but that wasn't important. Charlie was fairly certain it'd come back to him.

It was the presence of a golly field, really, that woke him up more fully. Since when, he wondered, his chest feeling a little tight, did he ever wake up next to someone with a godsdamn-- He rolled his head to the other side to take stock. A golly, and older than him, and hadn't he met him somewhere before? Well obviously they had met but Charlie did feel rather distinctly like he'd seen him somewhere else. A low groan escaped him. It was too early for thinking and oh Alioe, his head did hurt.

"You have," he mumbled, pressing the heels of his hands into his eyes, "the loudest clock in the world."

"One'f'many, ye-uh—"

That was perhaps the manliest morning voice the gunman had heard in ... well ... uh ... a long clocking time. Then again, it wasn't like he could remember a time when someone with more than a breath of a field had been anywhere near his bed, either.

"—oh gods, wait ..."

I did not.

One eye unwillingly cracked open, protestingly followed by the second. It was dark. Everything was soft and fuzzy around the edges, though thinking was sharp and painful. A tilt of a chin later ...

I did.

"Clocking stop th'Circle," came the hoarse, slurred, incredulous words, "issit jus'you?"

The question might have rung in disappointment, as if Corwynn somehow had expected a small, precious collection of bodies instead of just the one he was still completely unable to focus on entirely. Really, it was just a whine without judgment, the ache in his brainbox limiting his ability to communicate effectively at all.

"'S far as I know." Charlie was not in the least put out by the less than enthusiastic reaction to his presence from the other party. It was too late for that now. Morning after regrets were not something he had any experience in, nor did he have much sympathy for those who did. He'd gotten what he wanted, after all.

Charlie rolled very, very carefully onto his side. Without jostling his head too much he squinted at the other galdor. Really, what kind of a galdor with money lived in the Rose? Blonde ones, apparently.

He really and truly wished he could remember the night before. All he could recall was going out, again, but from the looks of things something out of the ordinary must have happened. Idly Charlie wondered if it was the bit where he was a golly or the bit where he was a man that'd provoked such a tone of voice. Charlie was amply experienced with both reactions. "I don't remember so much complaining before." That Charlie didn't remember much of anything at all from before was something he was going to refrain from mentioning.

Oh ... by all the gods who didn't care, laughing clocking hurt. Coarse like sandpaper was the noise that escaped Corwynn's lips, worn thin by too much residual alcohol and the fire of a hangover. He chuckled until he thought his sea-weathered skull would split, one hand straying to his temple as the amusement faded into another groan,

"'S too damn early for that."

Besides, in his house, or at least in his bed, wasn't it his line?

For a moment, the gunman tried to remember even a blink or a breath of the night before, but it was just as dark as what hid outside his curtains.

Did he lose a bet?

Did he win one?

Did it really clocking matter? No. It never did.

"I'm no'one to complain ... 's fine by me. I think'm done with being surprised, but, then again, maybe not." He paused, both hands at his temples now, palms digging for anything that might resemble relief without success, "Were you playing cards?"

It was too early. Too early to do much of anything other than enjoy the rather rare experience of a bed nicer than his own. It wasn't every day someone with money took him home, after all. Charlie was so used to being something you wish you hadn't done the morning after that it was his turn to be surprised, really.

"I might have been." Charlie was lousy at cards. He could never win, and he never played sober. Cards sounded about right, from his rather fuzzy recollections of the evening previous. Was that really terrifically important, what he had or had not been doing? There was really only a little bit of the whole day before that he cared about remembering. Sadly, it proved to be the most elusive.

Still, he'd remember if it killed him. It had been years since anyone with a field stronger than his own had gone anywhere near him. He wanted to remember the experience, damn it! He rolled over one more time, both closing any remaining distance and ensuring his face was nicely pressed into the darkness of the pillows. Any light at all was too much light right now. An arm snaked out and ran up and down the length of one of Corwynn's arms. Hour or headache bedamned, he was certainly not opposed to try reenactment to jog his memory. Maybe. Hopefully.

"Hmm." The fuzzy, non-commital, slightly thoughtful noise was about all the older galdor could muster, self-conditioned enough in his tactile nature to offer no resistance to the other man's arm ...

Man.

When was the last time that happened?

It clocking well wasn't a first, but it wasn't something he could call a habit, either. No, he'd certainly made his preferences of attraction clear, but two decades in the Rose could never had labeled him as exclusive.

Corwynn was pressed to consider, idly curious, despite the discomfort too much thinking seemed to cause under his skull. Oh, as a student, there was some indecision, but, gods, that was years ago. In the scheme of things, the blond found it hard to declare any stories he could tell of Brunnhold of consequence. The Harbor was a different animal entirely, of course. Sometimes, you couldn't take home just one wick; you had to take a couple of them along for the ride. Sometimes, you just needed a change of scenery. Race or gender, lines blurred when you just stopped looking at them. When you shot people on the streets for a living. Creeping up on half a century had given him plenty of opportunity to have at least see plenty, let alone do it. Not that everything had been worthwhile, of course, but that was sometimes hardly the point.

He drifted a little, not entirely awake, more than just mildly nostalgic in the strangely comfortable presence of a body with a field ... a real field, not half of one or the absence of one entirely, but one that, though weak, still defined the fact that they shared more than one thing in common.

Ah. There it was—

"Oh shit. I bought you drinks. Days ago." The gunman muttered, a light going on in the hungover darkness of his mind, though the night before was still a blank, "You were with a girl, though, someone hardly out of their school uniform. Mmm. Those were nice. Uniforms, I mean."

He yawned, "Are you going to get a tattoo of your address next?"

Bought him drinks? When had another golly ever bought him-- ah! Now he remembered. His hand paused. That had been with his sister, an association he did not want to make with his current situation. "I'm barely out of uniform, you know," he said with a voice muffled by the pillow. He still had his. One never knew when such a thing would come in handy, after all. It wasn't like he was ever going to get any taller. "The girl was my sister." And absolutely no reason to have passed up his offer before. Charlie was mildly pleased that even though he hadn't really gone looking for it, he'd gotten his way in the end. He also vaguely remembered having seen another man in the Walk, but it didn't seem relevant.

That tattoo did draw the eye in all the right places though. He wiggled his hips a little, laughing. It was certainly a conversation starter, at least. All sorts of interesting opportunities came up when you had your own name tattooed on your ass.

Still he couldn't remember a damn thing! "I'm at a disadvantage, now. You know my name and I don't know yours." He didn't normally collect names, but he didn't normally collect gollies, either.

"Most would say that the Harbor isn't quite the city for sight-seeing or summer houses ..." Mused the older galdor once Charlie mumbled the girl whose inebriation he'd paid his own coin for had been a relative. There had been family resemblance, maybe one of them had even mentioned their actual relationship, but he hadn't felt the need to commit facts to memory at the time. Glancing at the lump buried in his pillows, he added with his more usual coyness, still hoarse with tiredness,"... though I suppose that depends on what you're looking for."

Shifting a little, the blond tucked his free arm behind his head, intentionally curling slightly in the other galdor's direction, "As for the disadvantage, mmm, I suppose that's a habit of mine." He either assumed residents of Old Rose would know him or of him or had long-since decided not everyone needed his name to go home with anyway, depending on the situation. In his line of work, it was never a bad thing to be cautious.

"Now that I'm in the service of the King, I go by Corwynn." He chuckled then, eyes straying briefly to the grey hint creeping from behind his curtains before closing them again, taunting quietly, "And we won't be discussing just how long out of that green jacket I am."

Not the place for sight-seeing, indeed. That whole visit had been a disaster, really, beginning in getting Laur drunk and tattooed and ending in her leaving with an even lower opinion of him, if that was at all possible. At least he'd gotten his bird back.

So, now he had a name. Had he gotten one the night before? Probably not. It might have come in handy. Then again, maybe not. Charlie frowned, then sighed a bit internally. He probably was going to never know. How wasted had he been then?

"Vintage, then." Like he didn't already have a decent idea just how much younger he was than the other man. That wasn't too terrifically unusual. Was that something he could play up? He was dimly curious as to just what Corwynn's like of work was that kept him both in Old Rose and in money. He sensibly thought it might be best not to ask, though he less than sensibly was planning out just how he might go about asking other things. "Can we try that again?" being chief among them. It was early enough to not really count as a morning, wasn't it? So it wasn't late enough to count as too late and time to leave. Right?

The blond coughed another short, coarse laugh at the accusation of possibly fitting into the antique category of aging, though he supposed if he'd bothered to actually compare his age to the honest ages of his more recent list of conquests, he'd have been left feeling older than he'd like. Though, any sort of comparisons of his recent bedroom activities would tell a tale of disregard for real social convention, with perhaps the current situation surprisingly bordering on the more culturally acceptable when compared to ... say ... sleeping with a passive. More than once.

"I'll try not to take offense to that, Charlie." He quipped with a broad grin that made his amusement obvious, one eye cracking open reluctantly as he added with blatant baiting, "Because it would just be a shame if I was too old to keep up."

Somewhere the depths of the pillows Charlie's face broke into a positively evil expression. Now that, right there, was a promising statement if he ever heard one. He even bothered to pull his face out of the pillows for that one. "That would be a shame." He was rather emphatic. "You know I really do have quite a lot of youthful enthusiasm." A hopeful tone crept into his voice. Refresh his memory, make some new ones, go back to sleep, leave. Sounded like a plan to him.

It wasn't a head-turning comment so much as one that required a full-body rotation—slowly, curiously, if only so that the mischievousness of the gunman's grin was as obvious as possible in the darkness. With a stretch and a yawn, he settled wordlessly onto his side to face the younger man who'd decided to appear from behind the pillows. Corwynn hummed through his nose almost chidingly, unable to contain the strange mix of both sarcasm and coyness,

"Because youthful enthusiasm is always enough to drag any galdor far from the cushy life of Vienda to Old Rose. Clocking more than enough, I'm sure." Oh, if that wasn't both a tease and a personal admission, nothing was. Corwynn was hardly still in the Harbor because of any form of enthusiasm alone. Not anymore ... if he'd ever been at all. No, while life in Vienda had never really been able to contain him (nor had he really been able to stand it), there was something about the Harbor that was still never enough.

Arching a blond eyebrow, he added in practically a purr, thick with challenge in defiance of the dull ache in his temples, "Unless there's something else you're trying to sell me at the moment ...?"

Were those wandering hands to compliment that question? Possibly.

Ah, yes, that was why he didn't sleep with other gollies, even if they did happen to be in the Rose. They actually noticed that Charlie's particular choice of living arrangements was out of standard. If any of the vast multitudes he'd slept with from the lower races had thought him unusual, they certainly never said anything. He was still too fresh and new to the Harbour to be entirely comfortable having his own strangeness pointed out ot him.

No, he was not in Old Rose out of any sort of enthusiastic love for the place. "What I'm doing living here isn't really important, is it?" His tone was light, belying the sudden tenseness he felt at having his life looked at by a stranger. Even the hint of examination from another galdor was too much for him. Better he didn't let that subject go any further. "There is something I'm selling. Me." Charlie wasn't really one to be subtle or indirect if it wasn't required. At this point he figured them a bit beyond the need for delicate hints and pleasantries. Even if he was refused, as long as he was allowed to sleep a bit more in a bed that didn't smell faintly of basements, he was quite content with his exploits. Though if he had the choice he would really rather not be refused. Sleep was so much nicer afterwards.

"Important? No, obviously not."

Corwynn could answer that easily enough; it wasn't as if the older galdor had any room to talk. Nor was he particularly interested in expounding on his employment details, despite the fact that he'd be lying if he'd have said he hadn't ever used his bed as a recruiting pitch. Still, he'd practically sold his fortune and his soul to the Bad Brothers, courtesy of Silas Hawke himself ... and, technically, he'd gone and done it twice already, though the second time was certainly not as pleasant as the first.

The third time, supposedly, was going to be the charm, but the older galdor wasn't really in the mood to spend too much time dwelling on the trip to Vienda that was looming ahead of him soon enough.

Not at the moment. Not at all.

With a purposefully dramatic sigh, the blond gunman willingly resigned himself to a further lack of sleep, "I think I've already paid in full for that ..." he added demurely, making sure that the slow closing of any distance between them would make his intentions obvious enough, "... so you're going to have to try to sell me something else."

Already paid? That sounded a bit too close to a "no" for Charlie's tastes. That wouldn't do at all. "No" led to "wake up" led to "go home" and he really wasn't fully prepared to do that yet. Maybe soon he would be, but not right now. Not just yet.

"Nothing else to sell I'm afraid, unless you're in dire need of a rather brilliant engineer." He wasn't particularly regretful about this at all, which came through in his tone and where he put his hands.

Corwynn paused briefly as if considering what exactly he was getting himself into—again—only more hungover than guttered and with absolutely no clocking clue what had or had not gone on before. Briefly. He wasn't one to waste time with too much regret when it came to bedroom activities, regardless of exactly where his choices had left him on occasion. This certainly seemed like a decent one, especially considering the gunman's difficulty with turning down well-timed propositions.

"Brilliant engineer?" Hummed the blonde, leaning willingly into the other galdor's hands, his own fingertips tracing lazy circles lightly over bare skin that was certainly not his own, "I think I can figure out what to do with one of those ... there may be hardware in need of a finer tuning somewhere around here, if that's what you were implying."

He sure as the Circle wasn't talking about his clocks, either.

That pretty golly mouth spread smooth as butter into a terrible smile. Clever bony fingers didn't stop or wait for Charlie to respond. It was pretty clear neither one of them was particularly committed to further conversation. He certainly wasn't going anywhere just yet, and by the gods he was going to make good use of his remaining time here. He had a talent for all sorts of hardware, if he did say so himself. Calloused hands dragged across skin, and clocks were certainly the absolute last thing on his mind. A little shift of his hips, the wet heat of his mouth-- he was going to make damn sure Corwynn didn't have time to think about them, either.

(( I do believe that is a place for a FTB! ))