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"Would you like something to eat?" Kravitz asked, voice soft. He had learned better than to ask if someone was hungry. That led to the discovery that they could no longer experience hunger, which was a whole different tangent he didn’t want to stray down. "What was it you offered me when I stopped by?" He leaned a litt... |
Brian afforded him a glance, and looked back to the fire, shifting slightly. "Donigarten moss snails." |
"That’s right. And mushrooms?" |
"Velvet ear fungus. And Menzoberranzan black truffle rothe cheese." Brian graced him with actual eye contact. "I would guess you do not have these in the pantry." |
Kravitz cracked a smile, leaning back a little. "The world is Her pantry, I believe. That’s what She said at midwinter solstice, at any rate." He pushed his sleeves up his forearms, rubbing his hands together, trying to concentrate on the words. "If you could have anything in the world, which of those would it be?" |
"...The snails," Brian said, wary, watching Kravitz closely. |
Kravitz held out a hand. "Pass me a feather? They’re in an inside pocket of the cloak. A small one will do, this isn’t a large favour." |
Brian’s eyebrows shot up. He reached inside the cloak, feeling around and fishing out a handful of glossy black feathers. They looked like frozen oil spills, iridescent in the firelight. Kravitz plucked out the smallest, holding it between his finger and thumb. A moment of concentration, centring himself, visualising h... |
Before it touched the wood, a silver platter materialised, landing perfectly in the space between them with a clatter of ink black shells on the polished surface. They were garnished with some kind of green-looking cheese, and black velvety folds of fungus gathered in clumps at the edge of the plate. |
Kravitz straightened and picked up a fork with a black bone china handle from the places eternally set up. He gestured for Brian to do the same. It took more than a moment for Brian to stop staring, but he eventually stuck an arm from the confines of the cloak to pick up his own fork. |
"This isn’t like fae food, I trust?" Brian said, looking wary as he brought a snail close and sniffed delicately. "If I eat it I go to hell?" |
Kravitz picked one up and sniffed it himself, shaking his head. "No. This has no bearing on your judgement. I invited you into my workplace, and I keep you fed. Table manners don’t factor into your afterlife placement, no matter what your parents told you." |
Brian looked as if he almost wanted to grin, and tipped back the snail shell, slurping at the contents entirely inelegantly and dripping the dressing (butter? oil? something unmentionable?) down his chin. He set the shell aside, immediately reaching for another one. |
"Are they good?" Kravitz asked, trying to work the meat out of his with his fork and wishing he had a napkin. The dressing was going all over his hands, and soon it would be on his work shirt. |
Brian couldn’t answer, because his mouth was full of the second snail. Holding up a buttery thumb, he nodded, and a second shell joined the first. He chewed voraciously. |
"By the eight legged beast, I haven’t eaten like this since I was..." He chuckled, catching some grease dripping off his chin and licking his fingers. "Very young indeed. It does remind me of harvest." |
"Good." Kravitz finally got some scrap of meat on his fork and popped it in his mouth. It was well flavoured, but chewy, and he tried not to frown as he worked at it, swallowing with an effort. He set the shell neatly aside and smacked his tongue a little, trying to disperse the flavour. |
Brian thought it was hilarious, snickering as he picked up another. "More for me, I believe." |
Kravitz nodded, licking his lips, eyeing the fungus and not sure he trusted it. |
"Except you cannot only eat one." Brian said. "Count the shells, darling, one for sorrow." He knocked back his third and set the shell aside, lining it up amongst the others. |
"How many do I have to eat?" Kravitz glanced at the tray, wondering if it was bad manners not to clear it, considering there were only two of them. |
"Well. One for sorrow. Two for joy." Brian picked up another two, holding one out to Kravitz and all but forcing it into his hands. "Three for a girl." He nodded to his line of three shells, and lifted the next. "And four for a boy." |
There was an absolutely outrageous eyebrow raise, and somehow Brian managed to maintain complete eye contact as he tipped back the shell and completely scooped out the contents with his tongue. Kravitz was left with his eyes wide, feeling like he had seen more than he was meant to. Brian gave a satisfied sigh and set t... |
"And then it goes into a whole business of secrets and gold and silver," Brian said. "And once you reach ten you start again, but I didn’t get this figure gorging myself on snails." His eyebrows jumped in a very well executed wiggle, and Kravitz was left dumbfounded, closing his mouth and opening it again. |
"Does the hospitality, by chance, extend to beverages?" Brian asked, batting his eyelashes very precisely. |
Kravitz paused, mulling it over, before deciding that giving a drow wizard who was grieving his own life alcohol couldn’t be /that/ bad of an idea, right? |
"I don’t see why not," Kravitz said, standing up. "I’ll leave you to your snails. Her Majesty has quite a collection, and I suppose it wouldn’t hurt to crack one open." |
Brian looked like he’d scored some kind of private victory. |
"The private reserves are in the cellar," Kravitz said. "I suppose I can trust you to keep yourself occupied?" |
Brian batted his eyelashes again, tilting his head. "You wound me, darling. Don’t you trust me?" |
Kravitz made an uncertain and noncommittal noise, and turned to the grand archway that led to the rest of the stockade. |
He swept down the corridors lined with narrow red carpets and high vaulted ceilings. There were countless ways to get lost in the labyrinth of the Eternal Stockade, with its high featureless walls of shining black stone, the unmarked red carpet that ran the centre of every corridor, and the noises that echoed from ever... |
There were a few spirits littering the ceiling of the wine cellar, lost wandering souls winding their way around. Kravitz watched one pool against a divot by the doorway as he moved in past the high wooden racks stacked with shadowed glass bottles, some that had laid untouched for centuries, but none dusty. |
He moved in the direction of drinks sourced from the Underdark. Clusters of souls provided a dim glow off the necks of the bottles, and Kravitz moved to the furthest corner, where the glass of the bottles darkened. Blown from sand of the dark shores, the wine within was as dark and rich as the bottles themselves. They ... |
Wine had never really appealed to him. He enjoyed consuming it, but left picking and choosing the vintage to someone who had more time to spend on things like that. It didn’t have "poison" scrawled all over the label, so he was happy to drink it, and hoped that- |
"Oh no, Zanfendl, that won’t do!" said a voice directly over his left shoulder. |
Kravitz had done away with most of his startle reflex over the years. Which was good for Brian, otherwise he might have lost a significant chunk of his face, although the bottle did slip in Kravitz’s hands. |
A hand covered Kravitz’s own in a smooth quick motion, supporting the bottom of the bottle. With a soft chuckle, Brian escorted the wine from Kravitz’s grasp and, with a sideways smile, fitted it back into place in the rack amidst a familiar ripple of Raven-blessed black fabric. |
"There," Brian said. "Even if it is trash, it is very expensive trash. And I would not think it wise to anger your employer. Especially given my current state, no?" |
"Brian, I... I told you to stay upstairs. This isn’t... You aren’t allowed down here." |
Brian frowned, glancing at the souls above their heads rallying against the ceiling. "But they’re down here." |
"They don’t know better, they’re incorporeal. Brian, are you still wearing my-" |
He was cut off by a sharp, excitable "Ooo!" as Brian reached over his shoulder, pressing against his front and forcing him back up against the wine rack, which jingled ominously as Brian strained excitedly for a high-up bottle. Kravitz held his breath. His cloak practically drowned Brian, and swamped the both of them a... |
"Quikmavs! I’ve seen a bottle of this, in the flesh, once, at Priva’s party. She was so very rich, you see, but I heard it was a fake. She was never very good with intentions but everyone knew how much she paid for it and that was rather the point." Brian turned the bottle over in his hands, eyes aglow, fangs sticking ... |
Brian cut himself off when he noticed Kravitz staring at him. He cleared his throat and handed the bottle over. "Apologies, I don’t-" |
"It’s alright," Kravitz said. "You’re very animated." |
Brian’s eyes widened and his mouth went soft as he looked up at Kravitz, and smiled. |
"It’s a good thing," Kravitz assured him, looking at the wine in his hands. "You tend not to come across much of that, in a place like this. It’s refreshing." |
There was, for once, no wise retort. When Kravitz glanced up to check Brian was alright, given his uncharacteristic silence, he was met with that same soft smile, and it did something funny to a heart that had long since stopped working. |
A heart that kicked up a real fuss when Brian leaned up, slid a hand around the back of Kravitz’s head, and pulled him down for a kiss. |
It felt like it burned for a year; Brian stretched up against Kravitz’s front, chest pressed to chest, wine bottle caught between them, and Brian was warm. His hand was warm caught in Kravitz’s hair and his lips were warm against Kravitz’s, and Kravitz felt the air more cold and keen when Brian pulled away, taking the ... |
The silence didn’t seem to stretch nearly as long as the kiss had. Brian stood in front of him, looking up at him for a moment before turning away, trying and failing to hide a grin. |
"You are not very good at that, I think," Brian said as he set off back along the aisles of wine racks, gaze dragging over each bottle he passed, cloak whispering along the floor as he walked. No. As he sauntered. |
Kravitz faltered, trying to take a step and somehow stumbling on nothing at all. "Good at what, exactly?" |
"Oh. You know." Brian spun around, just long enough for Kravitz to catch him winking, a finger pressed to his lips. |
He got about twenty paces away before Kravitz realised he should be following him to make sure he left without taking anything. Kravitz’s boots clicked against the floor at a slightly more hurried pace than he would have liked, playing catch up with this undead drow that seemed to be running his shit all of a sudden. B... |
As they made their way back to the hall, they cultivated a comfortable silence. But every time Kravitz caught a glimpse of Brian’s face in the low light of the candelabras he saw that he was smiling to himself, fingers running over the lining of the cloak, and Kravitz felt the tips of his ears burning. |
It was... Unprofessional. Horrifically unprofessional, for something like this to happen with a soul he was interrogating. He had never been explicitly told not to do it, but the Raven Queen had employed him because he didn’t need the rules spelling out for him. He knew what he was meant to do, and how he was meant to ... |
Uncomfortable thoughts about the dynamic of the situation flitted around Kravitz’s head as he followed Brian back through the cool dim corridors of the stockade, thoughts about how he, Kravitz, had such absolute power over him, and soft questions on the idea of why Brian would do something as bizarre as kiss him... But... |
Kravitz couldn’t bring himself to feel too bad about the whole thing when he saw Brian brush a strand of hair out of his face and tuck it behind an ear, grinning as he lead the way back to the dining room with the cloak flowing behind him, like he’d grown up walking the halls. |
The bottle was open before either of them sat back down. Brian had worked it open with his fingernails and pulled the cork out with his teeth, setting it on the table and licking his lips, sniffing at the bottle. |
"Do you have glasses?" Brian said. "I’m not some feral animal, I have standards." |
Kravitz reached for two of the nearest place settings, pulling them closer and offering them to Brian, then moving the parchment out of the way so it wouldn’t get red wine spilled on it. That wouldn’t look good when the bounty was called in. Brian poured for the both of them, grinning as the wine glugged into the cryst... |
"So the cave you were in, when I met you," Kravitz began, "is that where they-" |
"Mm-mmm. Nope. That is not how this works," Brian said, shaking his head and wagging a finger as he picked up his glass and clinked the rims together with a soft ding. "I have the cloak. So I will be asking the questions, I think." |
Kravitz blinked, faltering. "T-That’s not how-" |
The quill was yanked out of his hand before he could protest further. The parchment followed, propped against Brian’s knees as he got comfy on his chair. He smirked wide and self-satisfied as he licked the nib of the quill and turned the parchment over, looking at Kravitz over the top of the sheet. |
"I will be asking the questions now, Mr. Kravitz. If that is even your real name?" Brian arched an eyebrow, giving Kravitz an accusatory look. |
Kravitz took a heavy swig from his wine glass, and refilled it. "That is my real name." |
"First or last?" |
"Just Kravitz," he said, unbuttoning the top button of his shirt and sighing. Seemed he’d need to get comfortable for this. The questions undoubtedly weren’t going to stop coming. |
"I see, Just Kravitz. Very interesting." |
Brian wrote something down, looking very pleased with himself. |
"And how did YOU die, Kravitz?" He gestured with the feather of the quill, reaching for his drink and taking a sip. |
"I don’t remember," Kravitz said, raising his eyebrows briefly. |
"Hmm. Do you smell that, Mr Kravitz?" Brian sniffed the air. "It smells like-" |
"It’s not bullshit," Kravitz interjected, sounding fairly tired. "I’ve used that line before, Brian, it doesn’t get people to talk." |
"Hmm. You’re no fun," Brian said, pouting briefly, sipping at his drink again. "Does wine?" |
"Depends on the wine. And the people." |
There was a moment of stillness during which they shared a glance, and Brian grinned. He seemed to be enjoying this far too much. |
"Then I think you should top up your glass," he said, taking another sip. |
Kravitz gave a dry chuckle, and reached for the bottle. |
"Why do you not remember, Mr Kravitz?" |
"It happened a long time ago. And it wouldn’t help me do my job, wallowing in self pity." He drank the wine, closing his eyes for a moment and opening them to find Brian still watching expectantly. Gods, this was not going to be easy. "I don’t remember anything, except what she tells me. I wanted to be a conductor. I d... |
"Do you want to know those things?" Brian asked, tilting his head slightly. His eyes seemed softer than before. |
Kravitz paused, glancing back to him, and away into the fire. "Sometimes. And then I get over it. They’re not helpful thoughts, and I like my work well enough to ignore them." |
Brian watched him, far too quiet and sympathetic for Kravitz’s liking, who took another swig of his drink and averted his eyes again. |
"Sounds unreasonable," Brian said, leaning forward a little. |
"It’s part of the job. I can’t refuse to reap someone if they’re... my niece. Or something." |
"You have a niece?" Brian said, voice soft. Too soft. Sorry for him and wavering in the middle. |
"How am I supposed to know?" Kravitz said, looking straight at him. "She’d be dead by now, anyway. Her children too, if she had any. Tieflings don’t live forever." He looked down into his cup, squeezing the stem tighter. |
"Kravitz, dear, how old are you?" |
A hand appeared over his own. His eyes had got misty, and there was a lump in his throat that hadn’t been there before. He swallowed down around it hard. |
"About six hundred. I’ve stopped counting." |
Kravitz chuckled softly, looking up at Brian’s lax expression. "Tieflings aren’t meant to live this long. It’s not right. I don’t know how you manage it." |
Brian gave a soft giggle, squeezing his hand. "I didn’t. Remember?" |
There was a moment where all their breath caught and the air seemed to shift slower between them. Kravitz broke it with a startled giggle, covering his mouth for a second as he squeezed his eyes shut in an effort to prevent tears spilling out. God, those feelings were foreign. He kept them at such careful distance. Now... |
Brian stood up, cloak hanging heavy around him. He set the quill and parchment aside and stepped closer to Kravitz; wrapping his arms around Kravitz’s shoulders and pulling him in for a hug. Kravitz let him, leaning his head against Brian’s chest, sighing when Brian’s hand traced down his back slowly. A hum reverberate... |
"Thank you," Kravitz murmured, wondering for a sickening second what in the world would happen if her majesty walked in now, on this, seeing him fraternising with one of their charges. Brian would be disappeared forever, certainly, to a place Kravitz couldn’t reach, and he himself would be judged most harshly. |
The whirling thoughts were interrupted by a heavy softness as Brian set himself down in Kravitz’s lap, legs slung over the arm of the chair, leaning against him and threading his fingers up into his hair. Brian breathed slow, though he didn’t need to, and Kravitz listened to it, eyes shut and forehead pressed to the ri... |
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