tom (bargains) wrote in emillion, @ 2014-02-21 01:09:00 |
|
|||
Entry tags: | !complete, !log, miles baines, thomas miller |
Who: Miles Baines and Tom Miller
What: Miles and Tom reminisce about past jobs and hatch a plot for a new one...
Where: A hidden alcove in Tom's pawn shop.
When: late Aquarius, just before St Namorados day.
Rating: PG-13 for swears
Status: Complete
At dusk, the number of occupants within the pawn shop began to dwindle. Whether they needed to return home for dinner, or catch a show at the theatre, or simply finish their errands for the day, Tom found himself nearly alone. He engaged the final customer in conversation, eventually persuading the young man that he did, in fact, need to purchase that corsair's compass, which found itself attracted to and led its owner to splendid gemstones, and for such a fair price. Once Tom had finished the transaction and bid the young man adieu, he locked the door of his shop tight and extinguished the lights within the front room to give all appearances that the shop was closed. It had been a slow day anyway, he reasoned with himself in order to assuage the feelings of guilt he had when he did this, and not likely to improve in the darkening hours of the evening. Feeling that he was due for checking the books now that month's end had come upon him (how had Aquarius passed so quickly??), Tom retreated to the back rooms, and set himself to task. After nearly a half hour, his mind seemed to have decided that it wouldn't understand numbers, and Tom set it all aside. He still had some time. And he was in such a good part of his book… As Tom immersed himself within the next chapter of the classic tale of beauteous Islene and her handsome roguish lover, he propped his feet upon the desk, resembling a lithe tomcat stretched out upon its owner's bed as though it owned the place. It suited. And the time passed like that for a while, the shopkeep content to drown in his reading—until the creak of a floorboard and muffled curse from the storefront announced that Tom Miller had one last guest for the day. The profanity broke what would’ve otherwise been a rather impressive feat of stealth. Just as Tom looked up from his pages, Miles found the hidden panel in the wall behind the desk (few knew of its existence; the switch was as much a key to Thomas’ home as a literal key) and pressed it in, opening passage to The Goldmine’s back alcove. “It’s dark as pitch out there,” Miles grumbled, one hand rubbing his hip where it had collided with the sharp edge of a table. “You’re lucky I didn’t break any of your wares. Knowing my own luck, it probably would’ve been some sort of incredibly delicate glass vase, cursed with the angry spirit of some ancient dead wizard.” Miles was tracking melting snow all over the hardwood floor, shedding his layers as he entered and shook off the still-bitter cold of Emillion in Aquarius; the weather had been unusually harsh this year, bringing snowstorms and ice monsters alike with it. At least this quiet evening was less offensive. "You've brought the snow in with you," Tom protested much like a disgruntled housewife whose unruly brood of children tracked in mud, water, or any other sort of unsavoury mess. But as much as Tom seemed unhappy to see his good friend making such a mess, he was also feeling very lazy and not terribly interested in cleaning it up. Tom quickly folded the corner of the current page in his book, to hold his place there for when he would inevitably pick it up once again. "Davlynn was just about to kiss Islene and she was beginning to realise how madly in love she was, and now you've interrupted me. Quite noisily, I might add," he said with a grin. "Who's to say you haven't awoken some angry spirit of a dead mage anyway, and that it won't come haunting you for the rest of your life?" “Ooooh, blast and ruin. Then I think I’m doomed, brother.” For a moment, Miles’ flamboyant actor’s instincts kicked in and he looked genuinely anxious, concerned, devastated even—before he laughed and pulled up a spare chair and threw himself into it, tugging at his dripping boots to discard what had rapidly become wet socks. These antics always had the assured outcome of cheering up Tom when he happened to be in the midst of a crippling unhappiness, and making him positively raucous with laughter when he wasn't; the result now was that Tom threw his head back and laughed. “It’s bloody miserable in the street,” Miles said. “I can’t blame you for holing up with Davlynn and Islene, who are decidedly much nicer company than the wind. Do you think they’ll live happily ever after?” He made himself comfortable like he always did: with an inconsiderate air of proprietary ownership and what’s mine is yours. An entire childhood of slippery fingers had led to a thoughtlessness for others, treating Tom’s home and shop and belongings as if they were Miles’ own. ‘It’s a sign of love,’ he would protest (and had protested) every time it happened to come up. "I'm sure they will, brother," Tom answered. That seemed to be the standard for these romances which Tom inexplicably found himself digesting. Secretly he enjoyed happily ever afters. It seemed a rare occurrence. Just then, Tom caught a whiff of Miles's unclad feet. Moist, fetid, and really unbearable. And he couldn't resist from teasing his brother in arms. He made a dramatic, grimacing expression. (Even Tom was prone to his flamboyance, after all.) "Damn it, man, what a stench. Have your feet died?" “If they have, it’s the weather’s fault and the fault of these boots.” Miles looked sorrowfully down at his threadbare boots with their worn-out soles, water seeping in through the loosening seams. “Faram, sometimes I prefer getting to wear my disguises—at least they’re better-tailored. Fuck it. Do you have some spare clothes squirreled away around here somewhere?” "Aye, I think I do," Miles's companion confessed. There had been an occasion or two when Tom had squirreled things away within his hidey-holes. There were so many of those. Extricating himself from his comfortable position at his desk took only scant seconds and then Tom scrambled to crouch beneath it as though he were intent to start a particularly rousing game of hide-and-seek. Miles perked up in his seat, leaning upwards in an attempt to see what the other man was doing. But when Tom resurfaced, it was with a thick lumpy burlap sack, the contents of which promised a bounty of dry clothes for Miles to wear. The state of cleanliness of the clothing articles, however, could not be guaranteed. The sack pelted Miles in the head before falling to the floor at Miles's offensively smelly feet. "There," Tom said, smugness thick upon his expression. “I cry foul,” the other man said, squinting suspiciously at the sack and then his friend. “I suspect you’re having it on and this is simply your bag of dirty laundry. Pull the other one, it’s got bells on.” But he knew Tom’s habit of making caches—it was a trick they’d both picked up at the same time, creating little stowaways and littering them throughout the city, safe spots and dead drops in the event of running into trouble and needing supplies. So Miles opened the sack and started rooting through it, searching for dry clothes that were at least moderately laundered. “Remember the time we lost all our clothes?” Miles mused, voice muffled within the depths of the sack. “Summer ‘10. Jumping rooftops from the comtessa’s garden and needing to raid that poor tailor’s laundry line on our way down.” Laughter, deep and guttural, resonated from within Tom's chest. The memory brought tears to his eyes - just as the expression on the tailor's face. "How could I not remember?" Tom declared. "It was one of our best ventures to date, though absolutely nothing will top the time I had to rescue you from the islanders after they decided to make you their consort." A snicker, then, and Tom ducked out of reach from Miles's fists, which could be mighty indeed. "And," he added further, with more snickers, "we needed to convince them that you were not in fact a male prostitute with Lady Delmare's abandoned corset and petticoats." Miles found the nearest available projectiles from his friend’s desk—a paperweight for the books Tom kept reading, then a fountain pen, then an ink blotter—and flung them at the other man, a bit like an amateur juggler gone rogue. “They were an incredibly expensive corset and petticoat, thank you kindly. Getting away with their pirate gold was the best capstone to that day. Running in a corset is downright impossible.” The mime sighed, a little wistfully, carried away on the waves of nostalgia. “Ah, the good old days. We should do more jobs. As the lads. The Merry Women are fantastic and all, but there’s too much estrogen in my life. Petticoats aside.” At that, Tom couldn't help but raise an eyebrow at his friend. Too much estrogen? Was there such a thing? (Yes, indeed, he knew there was, but that Miles was saying he preferred the company of men to that of pretty lasses was eyebrow-raise-worthy material.) And to put thought to it, Tom could not readily recall the last time the lads had done jobs on their own. The Merry Women were fantastic, Tom agreed completely, and sometimes better at things than he, he could admit, but he remembered the days fondly when he and Miles got up to their own mischief. "I could never be tired of petticoats," Tom remarked without even a stitch of irony. Then he grimaced, realizing that his remark could be misconstrued and Miles could tease him relentlessly, and held up a finger in warning. Miles snapped his mouth shut. "Not a word. I actually meant that I enjoy our ladies' company. I don't want word getting out to Ari and Lan and company that I said I prefer to be a woman." Then he paused. "But when I put thought to it, we can do more jobs. As the lads." “Most of us have proper bardic experience. We could put that to use. You, me, Rhys obviously, and—” Miles gave a wince, a reluctant admission, “and Colin. Possibly Rozenkatz, if he can tear himself away from council business. That’s a good quartet, at least. I was thinking…” And then the gears started turning again, Miles instinctively pulling out another scrap of paper and starting to doodle his plan, laying out the idea step-by-step. There was nothing quite like a scheme to warm them on a cold winter’s night. Instantly, Miles piqued the other man's curiosity, and Tom leaned forward instinctively as Miles began to scribble upon the paper. He knew that look in Miles's eye, knew better than to speak now but to observe as his friend sketched out his - no, their plan. As Miles pieced together the hows and the whys, Tom gave thought to the wheres. "There's a town," Tom began, scratching his stubbled neck with a dazed, lost-in-thought expression to his face. "A town in the outlands. Far enough away from the city that we wouldn't be readily recognized. It would be at least a full day's journey from here. Wildebarrow.” “Wildebarrow?” Miles scoffed, his nose wrinkling as if he’d smelled something distasteful. “Isn’t that the place with a Faram-damned myth about a homicidal wheelbarrow running out of control? In all my years, I’ve never heard of a place more dull—” But then the gears finished turning, and the realisation dawned, and Miles grinned. “Wait, you’re a genius. They’d be star-struck to have a traveling group of bards come visit.” Tom flicked his finger as though discarding a dust mote from his grasp. "Of course I'm a genius. It's a pity you continually deny me that until it benefits you," he sniffed with heavy disdain. It might have been a dead-on impression of one of the nobles. Perhaps some repressed memories of his former life as a nobleman's son had made themselves apparent in his adult years. "But," Tom added, "I will let you take credit for Wildebarrow. It's a great idea, really. Once they've cottoned on, they'll be searching for a group of four or five men of various disguises." “We’ll need lots of theatre makeup for this one. More feature altering, less domino masks. Might need to dip into Arielle’s stash for that. And…” They continued like that long into the night, sprawled languorously at Tom’s desk in the heart of his pawnshop, dissecting the plan and how best to go about it—Miles would come up with a suggestion, Thomas would tweak and edit it, and together they managed to hammer the plot into some form of order. Next up: scouting the location. |