moon is blue. ice is stone.

Finally expanding my fandoms list! I had to write these two eventually, I simply had to.

The first time Lowell kissed her, they were sitting in some beautifully seedy pub, and a bloke she knew only half as much as she knew him, which is to say not at all, came waltzing over like he owned the place - like he owned her. (He actually did own the place, so that was that bit sorted.)

The rest of the group (don't you dare call it a team, because we weren't, yet) was sitting off a ways, and Blondie had taken to heart what she'd said when they'd come in, only not half enough because here was a whopping two idiots (not the worst it'd ever been) trying to cop something.

Except he wasn't. Yeah, he got something out of it, and he'd admit it, but then Syrenne wasn't quite sure what she thought he thought he got and what he thought he thought he got were the same thing. Enough thinking about it, damn. Have another swig.

All she got was a mouthful of surprisingly cool breath (and no tongue, thank the bloody heavens) - was that the ice? Or maybe he used mint leaves in his bicarbonate paste like he was cultured or some crap. Huh. Never met a guy in a place like this who'd do something like that. She didn't tell him as much.

(Fairly often that's what the swigs were for - to wash out a damned bad aftertaste. And she did it this time too, force of habit, the other joker was still leering around even with Lowell's hand snaked gently around her shoulder, bare shoulder, a womanly part that yeah, Syrenne guessed he was allowed to touch. Couldn't wash off the feeling though. Can't always wash something if it's not dirty.)

He never actually tried to kiss her for her - or for him, or whichever. He tried to buddy up, sure, and tease her about stuff that wasn't none of his business, especially the boozing, and that was nobody's business but hers and the barkeep's. Thing was, he played like he wasn't concerned, not really, and so did she. Same reason, different reason? Didn't matter, doesn't matter.

Does matter. Sometimes they'd get right tetchy, and even Zael would step away like he knew something was wrong wrong. Not that he was nosy. Lowell was the nosy one, always. Yurick kept his pissy face to himself, and Mirania would be stuffing her face in that irritatingly polite way she had, and Dagran would look more annoyed that they were causing a scene than anything else.

Nobody likes mercenaries anyway. They're a walking scene if they make a single bootstep on the cobblestones every other city slicker spends the whole day clambering over. So why should the mercenaries have to like each other?

Why should the mercenaries have to look out for each other? Because they're all here from something bad or other. Fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters. Family and not, and now they're family but not. Wouldn't you rather yell at a guy who doesn't have any hold to put over on you?

She wouldn't. He's not a good guy, he couldn't be. Ain't none of 'em good, the clients or the contractors, and it's a hell of a handbasket that they even put in for honest coin. Coin buys booze and armor and weapons. Nothing anybody who's good for anything wants.

But Lowell doesn't want that. When he sits there mouthing off about some bird he's pulled in the next run-down alley over, he doesn't want to buy her a cheap drink. He doesn't want her to be a cheap drink.

And then he looks at Syrenne, and she doesn't look back - doesn't pretend not to, or any of that crap, just doesn't look - and probably he sees something far and away dearer than the pittancest of pints she's downed.

You couldn't buy her for any price. She knows it, that's not some drivel he'd try to spout. Proud of it, too, she is, except in the heated moment when some crummy old sod comes up and tries. (A taste of her fist, he'd get, no matter how many wrinkles are shaping his smile too full of teeth.)

But he doesn't try. Really, after that first time, which doesn't hardly even count, he stopped trying. Would that be respect? Couldn't be self-respect because he's an idiot, a blighter in all the worst ways, slipping on his own sheening to fall over himself after a woman. A lady. A birdie. A gentle little creature.

Syrenne isn't a gentle little creature. She never was. Take Mirania: she's gentle as can be, always is and always was and always has the hardy underside of the leaf there when you get to overturn her. Syrenne could never be like that. She's tough, and they'll all know it. Hidden depths? Who's carving 'em? Gimme another beer, I'll carve 'em out loose. Wash it all away...

And then Lowell freezes up the dam back to where it started, maybe where it should have stayed, and says don't let yourself go, I won't let you let yourself go, I won't...I won't let you go. He's not a bleeding heart, Zael's the only one of them who really fits that description, thank god, but some things trickle. Some things melt. Some things are meant to make that glacier slide.

He doesn't let her go. The last time he kissed her, she thought then, was the same as the first time. And that's neat enough, I like things to be neat, I like things to make sense, because floozy ice mages with their armpits hanging out and their grin roguish and their necks scarred up from something she never had the courage to ask about don't make any sense.

He's not what she thought he was. And yet, he's exactly what she thought he was. What was she, to him? Who was she?

Later, she finds out. And that's the real first time. Who cares about mess and making it make sense, and what a mercenary should have to do, and what the numpty at the other end of the bar has to say? The one who wasn't too scared to sit with her, in the end...he knows how it ought to be. And if he forgets, she'll whack him over the head and remind him. As if he'd ever forget - he was carving it all down the whole time.

These two somehow manage to bring off something pretty special as a subversion of the main pairing's comphet, and I adore them. Been so long since I've played, but the feelings are still there.