#§ threads

[dunerover]

@f8weaver: @h3llslinger steals his hat (or coat) and runs away <3

He wouldn't tell you why, but Zandi was trying out beading. Was.

"The hell're y—?!"

His vest is yanked away so fast he's dragged off his seat. Zandi makes a grab for Jack as he reels off the end of the stump, but his fingers brush his spade and get nothing but air before he hits the dirt on his back, a deep red cow rug in a clicking shower of multicolored beads.

He scrambles onto his stomach with a hissing "Shit—" and pushes his chin off the ground just in time to watch Jack race around a tent and disappear. Ha. Hard to find a guy who liked this kind of attention lately.

"Oh, you assh—uph!"

His footing half-rolls out from under him on a freckling of beads, but all it does is make him worse. He corrects, whips his tail and launches into sprinting pursuit.

"You're fucked when I catch you!"

[dunerover]

@amothersvow liked this thing to get a thing:

"¡Oye, El!" Zandi slowed to a jaunty trot as he fell in step with Eliyen halfway down the cobbled, narrow street and slid casually into her personal bubble. There was a distinct, weighty jingle of metal as he snaked an arm around her shoulder; on that arm's wrist clinked a half-donned set of manacles, which dangled carelessly like a gaudy jewelry piece he couldn't have been sloppier about if he'd tossed them onto the pavement in front of her. This was all on short-notice, you see. But this was Eliyen he was talking to. She could spin it.

"Wanna arrest me? For, uh—" He glanced over his shoulder and over the heads of a cluster of passersby in a manner so blatant that anyone watching them might pay more attention to the way his hefty horns turned than the sly way he pressed a key and a silver, hawk-engraved badge he certainly shouldn't have into her palm. "Two minutes?"

[dunerover]

@bloodtwin liked this thing and got a thing:

In the battle's cooldown, Zandi waits until the others are out of earshot—and him and Puck are somewhat out of sight— before he makes his move. He saunters his way back between dusty counting house shelves and beneath the archways' secretive shadows, light-hopping over bodies and shattered furnishings with the balance and precision of a strange and stocky cat. "Hey. Pooch."

He slinks along to close the gap between their sweating bodies, to push his chest right up against Puck's back. He snakes his bloodied, scraped hands over his shoulders and down to his chest, fingers raking. He hooks his tail around his ankle. He tugs him in.

His own hot breath curls off Puck's ear and feathers down his pale neck as he murmurs, salaciously, a confession to him and him alone:

"There's a fuckton of coppers stuck to your ass."

[dunerover]

@swarmcall sent: A small fly seems to be very invested in what's in Zandi's mysterious bag. It keeps on landing, flying along it, landing again on said sack. Curious...

He thought the buzzing would have died down once they were far enough from those gnoll corpses. But no; knelt by the riverside with his top shrugged off and balled to the side while he washed the grime out of a wound by his shoulder, Zandi furrowed his brow as he twisted awkwardly to properly eye this particularly persistent fly at his hip. He was pretty sure he hadn't put anything rotting in his bag. Every once in a while, something long-dead might've had a dried tendon or two still sticking around when he found it. Sometimes he accidentally pocketed some shell that still had a living something in it and regretted it. But it sure wasn't usually attracting flies. Hell, he usually smelled worse.

Anyway, no hard feelings, bug. Zandi tried to swat it away. And again. And again.

Stubborn. All right, then—now it gets to be reflex training.

He shifted his weight, heels crunching in the gravel. He arched his back, his tail winding low like a cat's, anticipating the lunge. He aimed his open hands. He waited for it to land. He waited for it to take off—!

CLAP went his palms as they snapped together, cupped to capture, around the fly.

[dunerover]

@patchworkcowboy said: "How did you even… manage this?"

Oh, hey! I have reblogged a meme before! EIGHT MONTHS AGO.

It wasn't the first time he'd been caught in a net. It wasn't the first time he'd been caught in a net suspended ten feet up from a balcony. The setting was typical, too—an unassuming warehouse by the water, owned by some rich blood who liked to keep her contraband on the down low while she pretended her only business was gambling and violently overpriced housing. It wasn't even the first time he'd cut himself out of a net on his own.

It was the first time the effort only made it worse, though; the bindings seemed to tighten on him, somehow. Now he dangled at the most awkward angle, his wide horns and his ankles webbed in such a way that he swung like the reddest pig carcass, back bent out towards the ground at the waist like a wishbone. His tail wasn't reaching anything important either, no matter how much he curled it towards the ropes. This was going to hurt so much in the morning.

And this guy was here. An audience to his compromising contortions. That was a fun twist.

He craned his neck upside down to see him properly. Tiefling—good sign. Nice hat. Real nice scar. He wasn't making any moves to arrest him yet, either. Chances were decent that he'd just happened by.

"Uh—good genes," he said with a breathless laugh. "And a good story! You ever been down to Denorah's Dice? Turns out when she's not runnin' tables, she's handin' out—ugh."

He thrashed and groaned as all it managed to do was strain his neck and spin his brain. "Actually, you wanna get me down first? We can figure out what kinda meeting this is when I got less blood between my ears."

[dunerover]

@amothersvow "Oh."

Zandi's face fell, not so much from what Eliyen said, but how she said it. And the look she wore—

(He hadn't imagined it, then. He'd opened his eyes in the throes before and caught hers locked, empty, on the scaffolding above—)

It was like he'd blindly poked a sore open in the dark. Now he laid there, trying to figure out what to do about the sudden blood on his fingers. She didn't owe him that. She could have said anything, and he would have believed it.

"Shit. I'm sorry. That's—" He shuffled his elbows beneath his chest and pushed his head from the sheets. "The hell he do that for?"