Fingers tuned to the monotony of work washed over the hinges of the door currently being obsessed over. He moved, they groaned, filling his ears with an ocean of past whispers and off-handed comments. Thin lips turned to a frown as the comments turned cruel.
Dalit closed the door and stepped back to gaze at his work.
How it managed to become skewed he didn't know; nor did he care too terribly much to find out. He was not a man to dwell on such things. It did not concern him how things broke.
He simply existed to fix them.
Testing the door a few more times, he tucked worn tools away, standing with a sigh. Door fixed [and carved a bit to make it that much more attractive], he allowed himself to look around, heart hollow and throat tangled. Memories threatened to spill over, silver feathers and laughs.
He swallowed them back down.
Now was not the time for such foolish actions, he chastised himself. He had other things to fix, other holes to patch and designs to breath life into.
Thought was not a luxury he could afford.
Head down, fingers stretched, he returned to work. The next project. The next thought.
The next second.minute.hour.
Time passed him thoughtlessly as he went about his way, attention turned to a chair now, weakened with use|disuse.
She fluttered on the breeze of the Undercamp, revived by the dying of the day. That red breasted tanager heart of hers, little warmonger, always felt best at night.
Coy little thief.
Pretty little pickpocket.
Stille always entered her home through the skylight-- silent, so as not to disturb anyone who might intrude on her. It could've been a habit of a thousand homeless days, endless hungry nights. Now that this home was hers, maybe she just preferred this entrance to the door.
Either way, she heard the soft tapping of work downstairs, the glow of light from the ladder that descended from her bed chambers. Quietly, she dropped her trinkets and peered down to see who was afoot.
Dalit sat back on his heels, face in hands as he rubbed.rubbed.rubbed. Ocean eyes swept over the chair as his hands fell away.
He breathed.
It was an odd thing to him how something simply could dredge of oil-slick memories. Fingers and lips and elbows and bones. Eyes. Laughter.
Sighs.
The lion sat, wrapped up in the past, completely unaware of the little bird hovering over him as he began to work again.
tap.tap.tap.
Silently, she unfurled, curtailed her feathers and landed from her silent somersault on the floor behind her dearly beloved friend. The girl had to stifle a snicker even as her fingers threatened to trespass the back of his neck.
And when she touched him, the reaction was electric.
tap.tap.
ta-
The hammer, aimed so precariously for the nail, so used to its path, came down, diverted upon the touch.
His finger, the unfortunate victim. Dalit cursed, tossing the hammer down as he swung around, fury and snarls and lips pulled back in pain.
When he saw who it was, the carpenter calmed, sullen, and stuck his finger in his mouth, chewing the sensation away.
"Don't sneak up on me like that," he grumbled softly, embarrassed so suddenly at being startled.
"Why are you here fixing shit anyways?" the fleet hearted girl snipped back tartly, too soured by his negative response to feel an ounce of sympathy or apology for the man's innocent finger. "You shouldn't be coming to work after you're done with work."
With a harumph so excessive it was an almost audible word, she turned to her little kitchen, heels light and pale eyes rolling with the ultimate petulance.
Dalit frowned, pulling his finger from his mouth as he stood and followed after her. "I don't want you living in some run-down--" He stopped himself before insulting the house. He choked back his sharp comments, visage twisted to something of sudden sadness.
"This isn't work to me. And I wanted to do something nice for you." Leaning against the countertop, she tucked her chin, sullen eyes piercing even as her lips began to betray the light of her nature, before the falcon softened and began to preen, exposing that dove breast, pale and glorious in her ornamental, judiciously repaired cage.
"It's not run down," she offered, bemused now as her fingers found her jaw, found her cardinal lips, masked the vibrato of that quisling tongue. "You know I'm happy here."
"I know."
Short and sweet and _wounded_ as his eyes swept over her. He stretched himself up and over and thin, paper thin. One pierce of her tongue could severe nerves. veins. But he didn't care. He always did this, always proffered his open chest to her when she made those eyes, dipped her head.
"But I want to make sure you are going to stay here. You can't stay in a place that will fall on you some day."
He was close now, fingers curling on themselves to keep at bay. How easy it would be to brush that arm, that wrist. Hair. Cheek.
Not yet. He was still supposed to be angry at her giving him a start. "Where would I go-- to The Hall of a Thousand? To Vulklar?" Her questions were bellstruck with the tones of running water. "Don't be silly, Dalit. There's no place for me anywhere but here."
She pressed a hand to his cheek as she passed him, that playful platonic grin burning like a cauterizing iron set straight for the carpenter's belly.
"Are you hungry? I have some bread and some smoked fish that I managed to trade with some La'akai girls."
Dalit ached and grew furious and pulled back the sweet feathers that wanted so badly to escape his throat. He dare to brush his fingers against her wrist, wounded and scorched fingertips against porcelain perfection.
"I still worry," was all he managed to force out. He turned away, then, busying himself with his tools. Each one a sweet child laid to rest. "That would be fine." Dalit winced.
That wasn't supposed to sound so...cold.
"I wouldn't mind something to eat." That was better. That sounded content. The girl turned to study him for a moment that lingered the slightest bit too long before she returned to her task-- it took her disappearance into the tiny pantry to pull her eyes away.
"You feeling okay? Sometimes I worry about you, you know?"
Silence answered her. The carpenter remained crouched over his tools as though they were suddenly the most interesting thing in the world.
He breathed, drowning in her words.
"You shouldn't," he whispered. Dalit cleared his throat.
"I'm alright. Just a long day." It was always a long day when his thoughts wandered to Stille.
"Fuck, I wish I had some beer or something." The words came with a laugh to try to alleviate the thickness of the air that surrounded the carpenter, to cut the space in the room with something brighter than the last embers of the setting sun. She returned with the loaf of bread and the fish, setting them on the table and hopping into a seat. She broke the bread in two and held out one side for him.
"Come on, Dalit. Sit down."
That managed to get a soft laugh out of the man and he rose with a sloppy grin and low shoulders. "If I thought you didn't have any, I would have scrounged for some."
He slid into the chair just fixed, testing it, resting. Sturdy once more, it worked proudly.
He smiled.
He accepted the bread, taking a chunk out of it. He disregarded any civility towards the food in that moment. He was too hungry to care.
Stille had seen much worse, anyway. She had seen him cry before.
And it'd been super gross-- just snot everywhere, oceans of water just falling out of his face. If he'd had any dignity before, he'd lost the last of it in sleeve hankies and word distorting sobs.
Not that Stille ever judged. Sometimes, people just needed to leak out their faces for a while.
"Thanks. For the door." She said it warmly, eating her bread slowly, tearing small chunks off it-- as opposed to the frenzied, starving shark bites of the other. Stille took the chance to continue her slow study, her careful observation.
Dalit paused in his voracious eating, staring at the bread for a moment before he looked up at Stille.
He swallowed.
He smiled.forced.pained.hidden desperation. "You're welcome. It...was nothing." He turned back to his meal, lion eyes tucked down and away and thoughtful.
"There's a few more things around here I ca-...if you want, I mean. I can fix them if you want."
Elbows on the table, chest pressed firmly to the edge, she regarded the carpenter with that matter-of-fact almost crooked smirk.
"You need to relax. Go and have some fun. Or at least some fun that doesn't involve a hammer."
She stood, then, and those pickpocket fingers deftly swept up the specified hammer as she approached the ladder to her bedroom, hopping onto the first rung.
"I'm keeping this until you do."
The lion glared, watchful eyes following those tanager lips. "I have fun when I work."
He sat back as she stood, tension running along his spine, his hips, his fingers. When she brushed past his things, he /knew/ and rose, following after her. "Damn it, Stille." He hurt as he said such things but pushed it down, washed it away with the reminder she had his tool.
His friend.
"If I don't work, I don't eat. Give it back."
"Whatcha gonna do about it, big man?" she slung those mud words as she deftly ascended the ladder, looking back at him from the porticullis in the ceiling. "I could outrun you for days, so you better start talkin' nice or I might start feeling like you don't like me or something."
Dalit grew riled, vicious with his teeth and eyes and fingers and all those little strings that made him up. He breathed.
He closed his eyes and he breathed.
Steps took him close, over, up to the ladder. He took the first footfall. "Stille..." And in that singular word, there was such an emotion, a torrent of secrets and secret desires and longing and spitefulness. "Give it back. You don't want me to starve, do you?"
That spiteful girl gave him the most venomous of her collective looks as she retreated into the second floor. "Wouldn't want that now." She dropped the hammer past the carpenter and it hit the floor with an enormous thud.
The skylight creaked open and the girl was on her way out into the night once again.
Dalit flinched as the hammer was released and hit the floor. His hands curled, furious and aching.
And then he was up the ladder, the precious tool momentarily forgotten.
"Stille!"
He wavered as he followed her, lean and long and anxious. This was not how he had planned the evening.
"Yeah, fuck you," she called back from the outside as she hopped from her roof to the next one over. Middle fingers followed suit before she hopped down to the ground below. "Come at me when you lighten the fuck up."
Dalit stood on the edge of the roof, awkwardly balancing and glaring at her. "Stille!"
He paced, lion eyes roaming, feet unsure and weak.
And then he sat down, distress in the lines of his bones. "Stille, don't do this. Please. I'll lighten up. Come back." Just for a moment.
Just long enough to make the world right again.
She turned to look up at him and seemed to consider the proposition, before those lips curled into that wicked, punishing grin.
What a cruel thing, that girl's heart.
"You're done for tonight, boy, you've had your chance. Try your luck later, baby."
She turned and slunk down the road, hips swaying side to side in that exaggerated way that she knew all the boys liked, that made them love to watch her go. She waved over her shoulder.
And oh, how little she knew of the barbs she had in that poor boy's heart.
Dalit watched her turn. Watched her go.
He watched the words pour over her lips, poisonous and cruel and oh, how he loved those lips.
He groaned as he lay back, arm flung over his eyes to hide the world.
He needed to pick up his hammer. Needed to get back to work.