lucetilogs | Tir & Leo [closed; finished]

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[suikoden] tir mcdohl

Tir & Leo [closed; finished]

Who: Tir

habituated
What: Food plz♥
When: Yesterday afternoonish, backdated before the rain
Where: By the river
Summary: Leo goes to meet Tir by the river with the promise of food; the clouds start rolling in and barcodes are discovered not long after.
Rating: PG (with a grain of salt, Leo's got a mouth)

What. A fuckin'. Mess and a half. Things that Leo had learned over the past few days included, most memorably, that wings were annoying as hell to try and sleep with, nicotine withdrawal was not a kind mistress (more like the kind with heels and a riding crop), and fish apparently had more than a three-second memory, because the one that had talked to him so warned all his little buddies.

But it wasn't all bad. Right? An offer of food always placated the Half, and his stomach loudly echoed the sentiment as Leo left his little shack, shoving his hands into his shorts pockets while he scouted around. This Tir guy seemed nice enough, anyway.

"River, river," Leo hummed thoughtfully to himself, passing abandoned huts with glazed interest. The dull golden wings on his back jerked and flitted and rustled oddly, as though he wasn't used to moving them. With an exasperated look, Leo continued, stepping a little rougher in his frustration.

"Hey, shut up back there," he grumbled to his new additions, half sulking like a defeated toddler. No cigarettes would be the death of him faster than those Malnosso bastards would. Pointed ears perked as he caught the sound of running water, and Leo whistled a bit as he approached the riverbank. "Yo~ anyone out here?"

[sorry for the lateness, Ang. got wrangled into the fair yesterday and was all kinds of dead today!]

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He'd packed some of the fish he'd caught and smoked earlier into a small bundle and tied it with paper he'd torn from his book- there were plenty of pages, anyhow, and it didn't seem to be of any great loss. Later, he'd have to meet with Albert, but before that he'd asked to meet the man by the river.

What sort of person was this Leo, in any case? Tir hadn't seen much from the books themselves, but he seemed trustworthy enough, in any case. And in a place like this, there was little else available to do. The fishing trip he'd taken earlier had cleared his mind somewhat, at least, and his mood was calm enough.

Walking towards the river, he thought he heard someone speaking up ahead. A little closer, before he saw a man standing by the riverbank. Golden wings, he noted, before raising a hand to draw attention to himself.

'You're... Leo?' Tir asked, when he reached the man.

[ ooc; no problem, everyone's got business every now and then. ]

Swiveling into a straighter posture, Leo shot a glance over his shoulder at the approaching form of who he assumed was Tir, flashing a very pompous, very fanged grin. He turned completely, teetering a bit on his heels and shoving his hands on his hips jauntily, trying to brush away the fact that nicotine detox was making him twitchy as hell. Not like his wings weren't doing a good job of giving him away as it was.

"That's me," Leo answered, the intensity of his grin dying down, leaving only small creases along the black markings around his eyes. "Tir, right? Thanks for this."

Something about this man- the almost cocky way he seemed to be posturing somehow reminded Tir of another man, with almost the same attitude who'd used him as an excuse to get away with a free meal. An excuse he'd been thankful to play along to, at that time, considering what his alternatives had been. He'd owed a lot to Viktor.

'You're welcome,' Tir said, passing the small bundle over to Leo. 'It's not much...' He'd only caught a few more fish and had thought of going back to try his luck after his meeting with Albert later, but looking up at the sky, he saw clouds massing together in one corner, dark and heavy and low. An approaching storm?

Either way, rain was coming.

Leo's shit-eating grin went a little softer, almost sheepish as he accepted the package with a crisp rustle of paper passing hand to hand. Kindness from complete strangers was a little new.

"Nah, nah, s'good," Leo waved him off, busily unpacking the smoked fish and shoving one into his mouth, almost whole. He chewed thoughtfully before blinking, slitted eyes drifting upwards along the path Tir gazed. Dark skin paled a little as he focused in on the thick wall of clouds intruding along the blue of the sky, just over the treetops. Carefully, he swallowed.

"... Rain, huh?" The Half looked slightly less than thrilled, scrubbing his free hand across the back of his neck. He recovered a moment later with an overly dramatic sigh, "Maaaan. I wonder if those crappy huts would even hold up."

Tir shrugged. 'Possibly,' he said, not too sure himself. The huts were frankly no better than the ones he remembered seeing in the village of the kobolds; simple structures, all. Still, those had held up well enough. 'If they don't...' he started, trailing off at the thought.

It did look like it would be a storm, now. The clouds were massing quickly, far faster than he'd seen elsewhere. A frown crossed his face quickly, before his expression settled into the calm look he so often wore instead.

'Perhaps you should get shelter soon,' he suggested, quietly enough.

Scuffing awkwardly at the ground with his foot, Leo made a face at the prospect of a storm--though not an entirely serious one with half a fish still sticking out of his mouth--and mumbled something incomplete before thinking better of it, and gulped down the bite first. Table manners weren't exactly a strong point.

"Probably, yeah. That storm looks a little ... funny, to me," Leo mused out loud, voice losing a bit of its spunk as he suspiciously eyeballed the rapid billows of grey.

"Do they, uh," Leo fumbled for words, discomfort becoming more apparent as a crack of lightning split the sky in the distance, "N-normally do that?"

Tir shook his head slowly. 'I doubt it,' he murmured. 'I haven't seen a storm this bad in- a long time.' Storms and rain he experienced often enough, but rarely had he seen clouds gather at this speed. The last time had been during the Dunan Liberation War, where he'd been witness to the power of Cyclone and Wind runes.

Glancing over at Leo, he noted the fish sticking out of the man's mouth. 'If you're hungry another time, I could pass you more,' he offered, shrugging slightly as the feathers at the edges of his wings seemed to flutter in the wind. It was cold, and he half wished he had a cloak with him.

'...Otherwise, I should probably get going.'

Distressed at the revelation, Leo looked much like a cat resigned to its fate of a bath. Only once had he been in the middle of the storm. With blood under his fingernails and stomach emptied in some grungy back alley, that had not been a good night.

"Heh, yeah, maybe this time I'll actually pull my weight and help some," Leo quipped weakly, wrapping the remainder of the meal back up. Wind gusted past him, making him nearly jump out of his skin as he glared backwards as though there was something sentient there to see it.

"M-Me too," he agreed, before getting hit in the face with something close to an idea, "ah, buh--wait a sec! I'm probably gonna regret asking this but I gotta know before you go," Leo turned around, shoving thick strands of blonde from his neck, "is somethin' there? This burning is gonna drive me up a fuckin' wall." Leo shoved a finger at the back of his neck for emphasis.

To Tir's eyes, Leo seemed to be getting increasingly uncomfortable as the storm approached. He could hardly be blamed- as it was, Tir himself could sense that there was something inherently unnatural about the darkening sky. He took a half-step back as Leo turned his back to him, pulling his hair aside from his neck.

'Lines,' Tir answered. 'Of different thicknesses.' Unconsciously, he reached up to the same spot on the back of his own neck. There had been a burning sensation earlier, when he'd first woken up, but he'd dismissed it. Was the same pattern on him as well?

Quietly, he continued. 'It seems almost like a tattoo of some sort.'

"Lines?" Leo parroted, rubbing a palm absently over his neck while turning back to Tir with an uneasy look. "Like, about this big?" he asked, holding up a hand with fingers spread not two inches apart. His lips pursed as he considered it, the new worry fending off that of the storm for a short moment.

"What the fuck. Sounds like a damn barcode," he said, voice overlapping an indistinct growl. Puffing a sigh where he really wished he had a cigarette, Leo stared at the other man for a lingering moment. "You got one too?"

'A barcode?' Tir asked, unsure if he'd heard the man correctly. The term didn't seem familiar to him. 'Yes, around that big.' Leo's tone, though, didn't make it sound like anything that he should be particularly pleased about having on his neck.

It was only when he asked if Tir had something similar on him that Tir realized that his fingers were still resting on the spot at the nape of his neck. 'I haven't noticed,' he said, honestly, before turning slightly away from Leo. He pushed aside the cloth of the bandanna that he was wearing slightly. 'But... perhaps.'

"Yeah," Leo responded, an older look pinching at his eyes. He shifted forward a little, enough to remain out of the other's personal bubble (he had some sense of decency, after all) and frowned deeply at the sight of black ink newly etched into skin. A definite barcode.

"That's exactly what the fuck it is," the Half confirmed, backing away again. He made an indistinct gesture with his arm, trying to explain the concept. "It's like ... shit, it's like you're not a person," the explanation was clumsy at best as he tried to avoid the term 'human', "A barcode means you're something to be bought and sold. Like a possession."

Tir was silent as he turned back to face Leo, his face grim. A mark of possession- his right hand gripped the staff he carried with him a little tighter, his knuckles turning white under the glove he wore. 'The Malnosso,' he said, frowning. 'These marks...'

Dehumanizing. Tir was willing to suspect that Viki, too, had one of these on her. The thought of that- of anyone treating people like objects- made him sick.

It seemed like those who had been brought here were expandable to their captors. The Malnosso had made that much clear, at least. Closing his eyes briefly, Tir unclenched his hand slowly. 'Thank you for telling me this,' he finally murmured, the politeness in his voice failing to fully conceal his mood.

A twinge of sympathy swept across Leo's face as he crossed his arms loosely, unsure of what to say to make it any better. As loudly as echoes of 'Dirty son of an animal!' rang in his mind, he was pretty used to being treated as a thing, but never as a thing that actually belonged to someone.

"Mnh. Sorry to break the bad news and all," Leo said after a long while, chewing thoughtfully on the inside of his cheek; he didn't really want to bring voice to what the other was feeling, so he just offered another cocky grin, a bit more muted than the last, and stepped back against the wind as though preparing to leave.

"Hey. You a human?"

At Leo's question, Tir looked up. He doubted, considering what he'd read thus far, that he was human now- Filial, wasn't it? The name as strange as the name of this place or that of the Malnosso. But before this-

'I suppose I was,' he said, glancing at his right hand. Human, what did that mean? Some of his closest companions had been kobolds or elves, and it had been humans whom he'd witnessed do things that ranged from atrocious to merciful. 'Although I doubt that means anything, now.'

"Just curious," Leo shrugged haphazardly, painting him as the perfect picture of a simple idiot, "but that attitude ain't gonna get you anywhere~"

Leo gave another very toothy grin, jabbing a thumb at himself, "I don't care what these bastards did, or what's up with this Filial crap. I'm still a lion." Leo directed a less intruding point at Tir, expression still firmly in place.

"So question is, what're you?"

The grins that Leo were sending him were impossible not to return in some measure, and Tir gave in, the edges of his lips tilting up in a slight smile. A lion, was it? Compared to some of the people he knew- had known- Leo was relatively normal.

'I was born human,' he said briefly. 'Now... you could say I'm immortal, in a sense.' He declined to speak of the True Rune he bore, speaking only part of the truth. He could die, would die, eventually. Just as Ted had caused his own death, asking Soul Eater to take his soul. For a second, a look of sorrow crossed his face before passing.

'It's a long story.'

It might've been a victorious look drifting playful in cat eyes before Leo chuckled, stuffing his hands back in his pockets and kicking the ground lamely.

"Yeah, see? You don't have to say much," Leo relented, taking the immortal comment with a sniff and a grain of salt, "but you've got a story beyond this Mal-Malna-ss--bah, whateverthefuck they are."

Pride had locked his shoulders square and steady, until a menacing clap of thunder directly above sent the supposed king of the beasts into an undignified hunch, painting him as more of a cat that wanted to scurry under a bed and hide. "Ahaaa," he breathed as though he'd forgotten how, blinking upwards as a steady, cold drizzle began to seep from the clouds.

"... Not that this sucks any less."

Holding a hand out as the rain pattered onto it, Tir nodded absently. 'A few stories,' he said, looking over at Leo. The other man seemed distinctly uncomfortable in the wet, and Tir noted the pack of smoked fish in his hands.

'You should get somewhere drier,' he pointed out, 'before the water gets to the fish.'

[ ooc; ack short post, sorry. might have to go soon. ]

"Mn," Leo half-heartedly agreed, wings unconsciously tucking themselves against his back in the rain. "Yeah, gonna do that," he muttered, scuttling backwards a bit, "don't want this to go to waste. Save some of those stories, 'kay?" Spinning on his heels, Leo tossed up his free hand with as much of a grin as he could still muster.

"Good meetin' you, Tir♥"

[ooc; that's fine, I think this is about over anyway?]

Tir raised a hand in a slight wave. 'Likewise,' he said, smiling. 'I'll save them for a drier time.' The rain didn't seem to be getting any heavier just yet, but it was looked to be going to last for a long time.

Leo was... surprising, somehow. And something else about him made Tir glad to have met the man. 'See you again,' he said, turning away. There was still one other person to see today.

Hopefully that conversation would end as well as this had.

[ ooc; Alright, then! I seriously need more excuses to use the happy icons, guh. Aaaand I guess we can end it here. Nice logging with you-! ]

[ooc; LEO DEMANDETH HAPPY ICONS. sounds good to me, and likewise!]

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Tir & Leo [closed; finished]

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