Carmine couldn’t do this. He had not known true comfort in decades, but these conditions were something he couldn’t tolerate. Never in his life had he seen a storm like this before. Homelessness, once a scruple he’d weathered in the distant past, was suddenly watery death wish. If the sky kept falling at this rate, he’d be carried away on a tide if he curled up to sleep on the back porch of the Sharkswell tannery again, no matter how warm the wooden walls were. Or the rain would seep under his skin, chilling and killing him.

The Black Dove’s meekly stoked fires did little for him. He was soaked to bones. His eyes were damp, his flesh shivered, his lungs were like a wet paper bag. He knew the Black Dove was not a pretty place to be. Too many humans, too much smoke, too much dirt. But it was a cheap roof with cheaper swill, which was all he could ask for. He had no intention of sleeping betwixt its rotten walls; it was filthy and crowded and smelled like an outhouse. And, after an hour under the roof, no cutter left to afford it – he’d clinked it all to the bottom of a flagon and drank it down. He just wanted to stay here, at his little table, with a roof over his head until the bartender shoved him into the mud river street.

Curled in upon himself, a dirt-encrusted little snail, insinuated back in the farthest corner the establishment had to offer with shaking hands curled around a flagon he kept telling himself wasn’t empty. He’d squirmed away from the bar the second his pockets went dry, not wanting to pine himself sick over all the dark whiskey and amber beer. Just smelling it on the tongues of the milling crowd was enough to make his liver gnaw with want.

This situation would be so much easier, he would have thought had he the mind to think, for a woman. If you smiled big enough and sat on enough laps, you could always get a free bed or a drink. But if you were boy in the same line of swindling, trading favors of the body because you had nothing left but the meat on your bones, you just got a fresh set of knuckles to suck. He’d stopped trying at that game years ago. It was a lottery he was no longer stupid enough to play.

So for now, he would curl up into himself alone at his rickety table, all enwrapped in his misty cobwebs and little shadows, just waiting. Waiting for the sun to rise, for the storm to end, for a plan to form.

It seemed like Carmine was always waiting for those things.

It had been raining fit to drown these past few days, a relentless wet that drove Charlie to distraction. The walls of his apartment, never his favorite place to be on a nine, were simply too close. He couldn't stay in them, rain be damned. His machines, glittering and cold, were no comfort. He needed to be out.

So it was that Charlie Ewing bundled himself up in his coat and braved the Loshis weather, ending up at that most infamous of establishments, the Dove. And so it was that he spent his most recent coin on a hot drink to warm him from the inside out, feeling like nothing so much as a drowned rat. Some company would fix that rather quickly, he felt. The only problem was, no one else seemed to be quite as alone. They all were in groups, talking or drinking or gambling or all of the above. How absolutely dull! There had to be someone in the whole clocking bar who would give him the time of day. Someone desperate.

Someone like the man sitting alone in the corner staring into his cup looking completely filthy and desperate. Sorta cute, underneath all the gross, or possibly just with, Charlie was having trouble deciding. Lonely and desperate were just what Charlie wanted tonight. He motioned to the barkeep for another drink, then threaded his way through the crowd over to where that particular scrap of dirty manflesh had shoved himself. The drink was set down with an exaggerated clank, though he was careful not to spill anything or break the table. It had begun, and his posture and expression shifted accordingly. There would be no mystery here, that was for damn sure.

"Lovely weather we're having."

“Wass—“

Cut off by a tongue pinned to the back of his teeth. Eyes fluttered open in surprise at the heavy clink of the glass against the wood. For the splinter of a second, Carmine was so entranced by the thick scent of the liquor that the bristle of field went unnoticed.

When it did register, his surprise warped into a scowl, eyes narrowing to suspicious slivers. Every nerve in him bristled like a spitting cat. It was weak, if he was remembering clearly, but it didn’t hold the feral stirring that a wick’s did. Distinctly golly in its weakness, controlled yet not so clean. Gollies didn’t belong here. This wasn’t right. This wasn't fair. This wasn’t clocking--

Carmine’s shaking shoulders huddled low under his coat. He could already feel a hot flush of shame creeping up his neck as he huddled into himself deeper still, making himself small as possible. There were some things a passive just couldn’t grow out of.

Lips curled back, baring flinty teeth even as he snatched up the offered drink without a word.

“...tha’ fuck d’you want?”

Charlie ignored the open hostility and took up the space across the table. He took a sip of his drink, careful not to drink too much but just experienced enough at this game to know it wasn't the best idea to immediately let on how much of a lightweight he really was.

"Enjoying a drink and some company," he said with a wounded expression. Really such a negative reaction wasn't completely necessary, was it? The weather was dreadful, the drinks were warm, and it wasn't like this fellow was paying for any of them. Charlie's coin, Charlie's choice of seats. Just so happens that he chose, completely at random really, to sit across from the rather surly gentleman here. Judging from the lack of field he must be human-- hopefully the virulence was due to his being a golly and not because he was, gods forbid it, not being found attractive. Either way, Charlie was fairly confident in his ability to bring him around.

Carmine brought the whiskey to his lips before the man could even speak. Before he could even pause to appreciate the lush darkness of it or how many hats the smarmy golly had surely spilled into the bottom of the cup for it. Those things were unimportant. He slugged it back so fast his eyes watered, his nostrils burned. A familiar heat stoked up in his stomach, seeping through his limbs in a warm ache. His liver sang.

It layered heavy upon the sleepy haze a flagon or four of the cheap house beer had already laid on him. It was rich and delicious, but he brushed it off as a side effect of it being deliciously free. It had been years since a man had bought him a drink. And he knew the expected course of action following the event the way a golly knows clockwork. Not that he would follow up, but it wouldn’t be terrible to suck the bizarre golly boy dry of all the whiskey he was worth.

Let a man believe what he wants to believe. That was the secret. If the stupid sod thought he was going to get lucky, Carmine was fine with letting him think that.

“Issat right? An’ what in all o’ Vita’s great green erse is a golly boy doin’ enjoyin’ company,” the words were a gravelly snarl, “out in the ugly heart o’ Old Rose?” he sneered, knocking back another good portion of the drink.

"I live here." This was becoming an all-too-frequent line of commenting. Was it so outlandish that a golly would be here, in the Rose, buying drinks? (Obviously the answer to this was a resounding "YES" but that didn't mean everyone had to say something about it.) Far too many people had seen it fit to question him about such things-- Charlie wasn't sure he liked this new trend. While it did no good for people to be put off by his admittedly weak field the second he walked into a room, this increasing amount of disrespect wasn't sitting very well with him. Though there was nothing he could do about it, so it was probably best he learned to suck it up and move on.

The speed with which Carmine had knocked back that first whiskey, though, was encouraging. Charlie made a motion for another one. Hopefully this wasn't a pace he could maintain-- Charlie really didn't have the hats to do this all night. He had probably spent more money than he really should have already, but acting like he had a little money surely couldn't hurt his chances. If Charlie was a very lucky man, he was not courting a heavy drinker.

Carmine huddled down under his soaked shirt, tugging it close across his shoulders. Callused fingertips dragged across the dark ink stain beneath the shirt, beneath the skin. Touching the deep rivers of scars crisscrossing the flesh. Watery eyes, red-rimmed flickered uneasily across the battered tabletops, fingers falling from his shoulder to trace the nicks in wood.

Caterpillar brows piqued up into a fall of sodden curls when the golly gestured for another drink. He peered between their glasses, finding his drained near to dregs and the other man’s more than half-full. A strange constriction shivered through his throat, all his muscles drawing like over-tight violin strings. Carmine slumped deeper into his chair, glowering flatly at the man under a fan of lashes, trying to avoid the fresh glass of brimming whiskey soon before him.

Cautiously, he dragged the second drink close, curling his forearm protectively around the glass and the other dirty hand spanning its mouth, as if Charlie might think to steal it away. As if this were a joke. His gaze flickered around the room, looking for someone who might be grinning like a hatcher their way. Someone surely put the golly up to this.

“Really now? Where th’ fuck ye live, then?” There was a flicker of genuine interest hidden amongst the rasping growl that even Carmine himself tried to ignore.

Charlie made an irritated growl in the back of his throat. "I have an apartment," and he said this in a tone of voice that implied the thought Carmine was more than a little thick to not believe him. "In Sharkswell." Not the nicest of neighbourhoods, Sharkswell, but he could afford the rent and no one ever bothered him, not yet anyway.

The pinched, protective way Carmine curled around the drink was puzzling. What did he think was going to happen? Charlie had barely touched his own drink, why would he want someone else's? "Charlie Ewing, by the way." He didn't really think Carmine wanted to know, but well. People played hard to get, didn't they?

Bony mechanic's fingers drummed a little tattoo into the table. Something about this guy was off, but Charlie couldn't figure out how. Familiar-- had Charlie had him before? Perhaps a relative? He searched back through his memory, trying to place it, but gave it up as a lost cause almost immediately. Whatever it was, he wasn't going to figure it out right here, right now in this tavern. Best to ignore it and move on to more important things. Like making sure he had ample time to consider such a face and where he might have seen it. "Where do you live?"

Carmine scowled, cradling the drink close to his chest. Sharkswell? His expression was a clear mark of surprise, pale eyes flaring to teacup saucers in spite of his attention to keep them hidden. Clocking Sharkswell? Incredulous, that’s what he was. It was a nasty place, but that cold slice of the Harbor felt like home. He missed it already, from his moaning floorboards right down to the filthy beggars.

“Why…why…” he halted over his own words. Whether it was from the haze of liquor steadily thickening all around him or from his chattering teeth, he didn’t know. “Why the fuck would ye wanna live there? Ent tha’…like…slummin’ or somethin’? Iff’n you ever run into another golly they’re gonna smell it on ye. They’re gonna say ye stink like a dog,” he stammered.

A deep swallow of whiskey as punctuation. His eyes prickled, his mouth burned, he smiled just a tad. It bore more teeth than warmth. Slowly he slid down onto the table, arms curling around his the perspiring glass, face nestling into the crook of his elbow. Bloodshot eyes blinked up at Charlie, returning to their previously held half-lidded glaze.

“I found a dress in a alley ‘round there. Blood on the bodice. Blood on the skirt. Blood all over it.”

Here Charlie started get the idea that maybe he was chatting up the wrong person. The smile revealed teeth, and the teeth put him all together too much in mind of a shark. Pointed and brittle, had he found some sort of feral thing tucked away in this bar? The idea was not without appeal. Besides, it wasn't as if Charlie was looking to form some sort of lasting bond. Someone to spend the night with didn't need to be entirely wholesome. Or sane.

What did it matter why he wanted to live in Sharkswell, anyway? That was where his apartment was. Truth be told, the fact that it was so repulsive to others of his race was a positive. He'd never have to deal with any of them if he didn't want to-- and he never did. That field of his, a bare scrap of magical ability, kept the lowers races from getting overly close; his choice of living arrangements kept away everyone else. There was no one in Charlie Ewing's world but him, his bird and his machines. It was ideal.

It was the dress comment that drove him to finish the rest of his whiskey in one quick swallow, though he ordered another one immediately. If he kept drinking just enough, maybe this could swing back around to seeming like a brilliant idea just in time for it to go somewhere.

"That's... good?" He sort of smiled in a way he hoped was encouraging but not too encouraging. He wasn't entirely certain he wanted to know what this guy was doing picking up dresses in the first place, let alone blood-covered ones.

“I…I guess. It wasn’t ripped ‘r nothin’. Some girl musta had a busy night an’ jus’ taken it off.”

He snickered into the warm curve of his elbow, the sound muffled by skin and bone and cloth. He didn’t listen to hear if the other man laughed or not. He wasn’t really supposed to. Carmine had half the mind to drag it out of the bloated satchel slung across the back of the chair, but decided against it. All the worldly posessions he could carry were stuffed into that bag. It would have taken too much digging.

“Iss kinda sad, I guess. A pretty dress or somethin’. Tha’ girl musta loved tha’ dress hard when it was all new, but she just wriggled out of it and threw it in a alley once she was done with it. Like a –“ a wet click-click in his throat “—a whore or somefin’. Ent no way nobody’s gonna love tha’ dress again, nuh-uh no how.”

Another swig of whiskey, barely bothering to raise himself up from the table. He wordlessly reached out and dragged the golly boy’s fresh glass over to his side of the table.

“Yer a peach.”

It was more growl than sweetness.

If there was a protest from Charlie at his drink being stolen, it died unsaid on his tongue. "You're... you're welcome," he said, not really knowing what to say here. He ordered another drink instead of speaking. And another, for good measure, because he wasn't sure he'd get to keep this one, either.

"You sound awfully fond of it." He was sort of desperate to keep his tone light at this point. What the clock did you even say to a man giggling into his own arm and projecting emotions onto the dress of a probably-dead whore? The dress had been covered with blood he'd said-- it didn't sound like the girl had come out of it willingly. Not that it was any of Charlie's concern. "Perhaps there's hope for it yet."

Honestly, Charlie wasn't feeling particularly comfortable with this conversation. It was a bit more on the insane side than he usually wandered. But at least this ginger human wasn't giving off the impression that he wanted Charlie to go off and die anymore. He considered this a step forward.

“Uh huh. Maybe. I...I guess.”

Carmine’s brows crinkled when he went and ordered another drink. If the galdor wanted to keep going on pouring his ging away, there was no helping that. Right? Right. No need to put a stop to it when there was so much rich whiskey being shoved under his nose.

He nursed his second glass with the stolen one waiting in the wings, protected by the clutch of his damp hand. They weren’t shaking anymore. They were still and slow. With very drop that slithered down his throat, his inhibitions were dampening. The cold clench in his gut, something like anxiety, was warming over and heating him from toe to tip. This put a very small and stifled part of his mind in a panic – saying he should stop, don’t drink a drop more, get up from this table, just walk the fuck away, saying: I don’t care how hard it’s pouring down outside. I don’t care how bad you want to get soaked. Just go.

Rambling words spilled from his lips like water from a cup.

“It ent like I wear it or nothin’,” he scoffed. “But I wish...I could find somebody who would? It’s purdy as a flower. All green with a bunch of yellowy—or...or white; it was prolly white when it was new – lacey bits around the sleeves ‘n’ stuff. It’s decent. Real decent.” From another man, this might have sounded quite silly. But Carmine spoke with gravity.

A long pause, further words drowned by the last splash of his second whiskey. He spit into the empty glass and set it heavily at the center of the table.

“...why th’ fuck d’ye live out here, again?” he growled after the moment of silence, eyes damp and thoroughly befuddled, blinking owlishly up over the hill of his arm.

This dress, Charlie decided, he could already tell he didn't like. It sounded dreadful, he didn't know why they were talking about it. Not so much talking, really, as Charlie nodding his head and sort of listening while desperately hoping it would stop happening and he could get on with his usual wooing routine of making sure the other party was too drunk to think about the morning after.

Some fierce, protective feeling rose in him and curled around his private life, brittle and uninviting. What was it any of this man's business why he lived here? Did he really need to know? He didn't even really want to, Charlie was certain. No one wanted to really know why. Charlie didn't even want to really know why. He took a careful sip of his drink before curtly saying that if he was asking a lot of questions for a guy who wouldn't part with so much as his name.

Still, he hadn't gotten up and left. This conversation probably wouldn't end until Charlie became absolutely sure he wasn't going get to drag him into some dark corner and do terrible awful things. Hopefully without remembering too much of the conversation leading up to them in the morning.

“Wha’…I…uh…”

Eyes widened, eyes clenched shut just as fast. He hadn’t really been ready for that. Carmine. Such a delicate, winsome little name. A name meant to be chirruped over the edge of a wine glass before you artfully toss the spun scarlet silk of your fringe out of your face. Not one you slurred into the wet curve of your elbow, homeless and filthy and getting soaked at another man’s expense.

A human may not have noticed, or cared, or even really listened when he’d say his name. He didn’t care if any of those dregs of society knew what he was (or, more accurately, what he wasn’t). Let them know. If it made them shiver and hiss, all the better. But no golly needed to know, would ever know. That was a secret all his own.

A quiet growl proceeded his next words. “Ye can call me…” he snorted, and rolled his eyes to the sopping ceiling eaves. “…ye can call me Ginger, Chuck.” The sweetness of the last bit was stretched out in a languid drawl. Oh, he hadn’t been called that in years. Not since the sticky alleys and Viendan dives, where he’d kiss fingertips colored with tobacco stain sunrises and nuzzle along wire bristling jawlines, coy as a kitten.

He peered up at Charlie through the long bars of his lashes in a way that could have looked coquettish and innocent, had those eyes not been rimmed in red and mottled purple. But they were, so Carmine knew the effect was a bloodless ghost of what it once was. He looked more sick than sweet.

Well, good.

That very clearly was not his name. No one, not even a human, would name a child that. Probably. Why his name was such a secret, Charlie couldn't even begin to guess. Everyone had their secrets, especially in the Rose. Far be it from him to try and pry them out of anyone else.

The look he was given was, in fact, repulsive, which translated to "sort of wildly attractive" as far as Charlie was concerned. "Ginger, then," and Charlie didn't press it any further. He wasn't quite sure where to go from here. He didn't exactly want to instigate another conversation about dresses or kittens or something more sinister than that. But if he just sat here in silence, things were never going to go where he wanted them to. It was something of a problem.

"What kind of a face is that?" He settled on antagonism. Being nice would most likely get him nowhere, even more so than he was getting right now.

“I – “

Carmine faltered a bit at that. Did a flicker of hurt flash across those wide eyes? Maybe. That, coupled with the quirked brows of puzzlement. Hadn’t this bastard been trying to get at his undercarriage just a few moments before? Not that he wanted him to, but –

But the blithe flush, that warmth that had been seeping through him under the scrutiny of those brittle eyes, regardless of the fact they were shoved into a golly’s skull. The booze only intensified it, made it fuzzy and fragrant and almost okay. Okay to bask in the warmth of some stupid man’s attention without drawing close enough to get burned.

It was something he’d almost forgotten, a memory all painted with dust. That dust had been coming away fleck by fleck, as if blown by a weak yet determined mouth. Now, it had just been spat on.

“Wha’? Ye don’t like mah face?” he spat, rearing up from his cradle of limbs like a snake. That instance of vulnerability was gone in a flash of splitery teeth.

"I didn't say that."

Charlie, in fact, was the sort of person who would say a lot of things just to get a rise. Especially if he wasn't drunk enough to just pour all liquid-sticky-sweet all over the table, purring a thousand sweet nothings. To say that he didn't appreciate Ginger (inwardly he snorted) in an aesthetic sense was so very far off the mark.

"Not at all." He punctuated this with that sort of voracious expression he got sometimes (sometimes meaning often) and leaned forward a little. He had more of his drink, the swallow deep but sort of slow as he gave the other man a lazy, lingering look-over. Nope, definitely hadn't said that.

Carmine hunkered down in his seat, sliding down into the slick tangle of his limbs. A mudslickened boot snaked out under the table, brushing meekly against the galdor’s pantleg. It left a long swathe of damp, he was certain.

“Oh…” the flash of indignation faded from him, still lingering in hard splinters in his eyes and in the stiff curl of his lip. Still guarded, still distant, freckled cheeks painted pink with equal parts liquor, shame, and chill. He rubbed his hands together, like a man coaxing damp twigs to spark. When had things gotten this bad? He blew into his palms. Never since he’d made a deposit on the Wharf Rat room a few months back had he ever made his rent. It was by some strange benevolence he didn’t want to begin contemplating that Sparkles had waited so long to throw him out. He swallowed all his pay.

Maybe he’d give those brothels another look over. Whiskey was thick in his veins, that much was true. His mind would always wander to strange and dark corners then. There were hundreds more wicks here than in Vienda, not to mention all those dark, willowy sailors from across the sea. They all had eyes for sweet reminders of the penetentiary, didn’t they? The demand might be heavier, but he was hardly sweet to taste anymore. Too battered and muscled to hold the allure of a waifish boy, all soft hands and long lashes – yet too slender to compete with those brickhouse humans. Not to mention that burn of ink beneath his skin. That’d scare off any man worth his salt.

The effect of that smile was not lost on him. Peaked skin burned. Nerves crawled. A dryness settled in his throat, one that not even a third shot of whiskey could parch. Just keep drowning.

Fingertips walked to the center of the table, unsure. His eyes rested there too, as if they were too heavy for him to lift.

“….you got a bathtub?” There was a haze of resignation clouding the bitter rasp.

The pants weren't nice, which was good, because he was quite pleased to be getting somewhere and didn't want that spoiled by any mental protest at his trousers being ruined. Loshis was, in essence, the time when he abandoned all thoughts of wearing anything overly pricey as it would just be drenched and covered with mud anyway.

Charlie couldn't hear the resignation and he couldn't see the stiffness. All Charlie could see was someone who seemed more than likely to come home with him tonight, and that's all he wanted. Beyond that he quite simply didn't care if this Ginger or whatever was depressed or angry or anything else about him. He only wanted a name so he could give the guy some sort of mental tag. He was a means to an end, not a person Charlie wanted to make any extended associations with. So anything off-kilter about him, anything unsettling or strange, was buried away where he wouldn't think about it.

"I do, and so many other marvellous conveniences besides." Heat, for one thing. Aside from the strangely public seclusion of the place, Charlie loved his apartment for that coiled radiator in the back of the bedroom. He was fairly certain most of his rent was because of that and the bathroom, as the rest of the place was nothing worth thinking about, but that radiator. He could never have survived in Old Rose without it.

His hand was laid down in a touch that outwardly seemed almost sweet, but was strangely detached, like he'd run through this too many times in his head and was just playing it all out to the inevitable conclusion.

“Really?” Brusque, spat over the sharp edges of teeth. He was so slick in his own nimbus of damp, the humidity stuffed into every molecule doing so little to dry him over the past few hours snugged away in his little corner, now compounding upon a sheen of cold sweat.

It took every little splinter of self-control he had not to jerk his hand away, to not snatch up a fistful of the golly’s damp hair and smash his cutesy upturned nosie against the table until it was a slaw of bone and pulp. How were his hands so warm, among all the chill today? Even his blood seemed to run more cleanly, more efficiently, than that streaming through the veins of society’s dregs. Charlie's hands were pale and dappled pink.

Carmine closed his eyes.

Carmine let him touch.

The rain continued to fall, not caring about the rotten world one bit. Every drop that slithered its way through the ceiling cracks and splashed in basin of an empty glass by his elbow, that stood every second he’d let the galdor keep touching him. It would have to stop soon. His temples buzzed. His cheeks were cold. His lips split beneath the grind of teeth. …Soon. Please fucking soon.

There was an open invitation, spread wide as a whore’s legs, before him. He tried to wet the dryness. Tried to swallow all the hot things floating up the surface under fresh wash of whiskey. His mouth felt numb. The soft coquetries curled on his tongue like a worm on a leaf. He’d learned every choreographed tilt of the head and shifting glance, every milk and honey word to purr all astradle on some big man’s lap. But a glut of milk and honey is just a sticky mess. And Carmine's honey had hardened in the icebox. The milk's gone bad. He was all wrapped up in foil and bruises and bile so no one would touch him.

His eyes drifted up to the windows. Beyond the spiderwebbed glass, there was naught but ink and rain. That whiskey glass was filling up, each drop making the water ripple. He blinked up at Charlie, pale eyes wide and sweet as he could manage. A slight smile quirked his mouth, crooked and tightlipped. His fingers curled around that galdor hand and he squeezed just as his stomach squeezed.

Carmine bowed his head, acquiescing. He wanted to smash that glass. He wanted to bury it in Charlie’s face.

“Many a marvelous thing waitin’ fer me ye say, seh?” He turned Charlie’s hand over, ‘til his knuckles raked the wood. Callused fingers shivered over the lines of his palm. His smile quivered at the corners.

“Wonders and wonders, ah?” A grey fog of weariness swathing the slow words, the sick-sweet gestures.

His strained smile tried to show sugar. It only showed splinters.

"Yeah," he said. "Sure."

His tongue passed over his lips once or twice. This was going the way he wanted. Good. That was good. He could hear the clink of glasses and the voices of men, and outside he could hear the rain heavy as it was when he left. It wasn't going to stop any time soon.

This was the part Charlie hated. He knew that the human knew what was going on. Both of them had signed this contract already, the deal was done. No one was leaving yet, however, and he was stuck here until his companion wanted to leave. Conversation might be in order, but Charlie didn't know where to begin. Could he just stand up, walk out? Probably not. He could see in the tight, jagged lines written all over Ginger's face that he wasn't exactly entirely thrilled with this turn of events, which sort of puzzled and insulted Charlie at once.

"I think the rain's let up." Which was a lie, if anything it had gotten worse. He just wanted to leave.

“Nah, it hasn't.”

Carmine cupped his cheek in his palm, propped up on an elbow. His slight weight made the table sag on one side, cockeyed on spindle legs. He cocked his head to the side, biting his lip. The wet cling of the shirt was too big for him and was sliding down the curve of one freckled shoulder. The safe shoulder. He looked like a boy barely past his first stubble.


He was already drowning, but he wanted to be more than drowned. He wanted to be underwater so deep he was buried to the banks in river silt. He wanted his legs to give and eyes to roll and throat to seize. He didn't really want to feel or remember this. He didn't really want to feel or remember lots of things.

The bones in the golly boy's fingers were slender and hollow. Little bird bones. He curled those fingers, his bigger hands twisting them in the socket until he heard satisfying little pops. One moment he wanted to pet those hands. The next, he wanted to murder them. Liquor set his mind in a dull fire -- making it murderous, yet too languid to murder. If Charlie had been anything but a galdor, he would have been chewing glass the second he got fresh.

He lazily picked up the rainwater glass and swished it over the table like a little bell.

“It ain't never gonna let up. It's jus' gonna keep on goin' an' goin' 'til we's all floatin' belly up. That storm don't care whatcha are. A golly'll drown jus' as fast as anybody else. I don' mind it, though,” he slurred and smiled, so hazy and faraway. His fingers spiked up into the air, calling for another drink.

“I likes drownin'. Drownin' sounds sweet. It sounds like strawberries.”

"That's horrible," he said, thought he mumbled it into his cups softly enough that he hoped he couldn't be heard. The discomfort Charlie had been feeling this entire conversation was starting to take on an edge of fear. This man could quite possibly be dangerous he was starting to realize. Charlie might have magic, but even he knew he it wasn't very much. A field like his, what could it really hold back?

Still, the self-preservation that should have had him backing off and pulling away just wasn't there. This was an encounter that could very well end in a lot harm being done to his person, and he just couldn't care. So he'd smile and indulge this insanity until... whatever. At least he wasn't so sure of where this was going anymore. "Sure, strawberries. Okay."

“Strawberries.”

Charlie smiled, Carmine smiled.

His fingers tensed almost by muscle memory around that stupid hand. There were calluses. They seemed to be much-too-big hands, especially drilled onto a body so small. Even smaller without all the sanctimonious layers of coat, sweaters, and thermals that bundled the golly away from the chill.

“Y’know. I ent had a str–“ interrupted by an explosive bout of coughing, all rasp and phlegm. He wavered in his rickety seat, swaying in an effort to catch his breath and to stop the room from tilting on end. His eyes were playing tricks on him. “--ent had a strawberry in years. I ‘member how they’d always jus’ smash to pulp and melt away nothin’ in your mouth. I didn’t like eatin’ the seeds, though. I’d always...I’d always think a strawberry bushel was gonna grow in my belly an’ spill all it’s little vines out my mouth.”

He paused to raise a glass to his lips, and was balefully surprised to find it empty. He set it down and did the same thing a moment later. Again, he lit up with hazy confusion.

A strange expression had come over him. His smile had melted off his cheeks like a drip of ice, frosty blue eyes spread wide and lit with ghastly seriousness. It was the face of someone thinking on another plane of existence, head all wrapped in clouds – or more like the drunken mutterings of someone who’s pieces didn’t fit together quite right. Carmine was a jigsaw puzzle with a piece or two missing. They weren’t big pieces. Just little ones, just enough so it wouldn’t make sense.

“...like spillin’ out my insides. Ye...ye ever feel tha’ way?”

The lost, splintered look about him suggested that the answer was important. Somehow.