@worsethanwolves (continued from here):
"It seems we've started off on the wrong foot." He'd said each word ploddingly. He un-leans off the table.
The night hadn't gone as he'd planned. In a parlor, as he made his rounds rubbing elbows with people worth rubbing elbows with and getting the dirt on people worth robbing, a gentleman, livid and half-drowned in absinthe, jabbed a finger at him. Apparently, he'd recognized him from Valentine. He'd accused him of thieving.
It evolved to a near-bluster after that. Trelawny attempted to finesse his way out of it; a quick dash of lies here. A whole year’s supply worth. The man threw out a fist, too drunk, and Trelawny backed away against the bartop. Then, like the hand of God: Arthur.
His hat's gone askew. Bless his soul, Trelawny doesn't know it.
Arthur fixes it for him, and he seems lighter.
"Thank you," Trelawny says, the 'you' leaving him pluck-y and dog-whistle high, or in the way that comes when helping yourself to a last piece of something, don't mind if I do. He pairs it with a bow, and then he straightens. "Clothes make the man and some such."
If he notices Arthur's face has gone red, then perhaps it's all lighting. Or from being windswept. Or a life spent under the sun, irrefutably. And if he at all smells pine trees, smoke, and sweat, or notices Arthur sticking out here like a white dress in a funeral, he mentions none of it. Instead, he turns on his heels.
"The knight in shining armor, are we?" he drawls, light and too casual. He doesn't look over. "And away they rode into the sunset." It's time to go, he means, and given their man on the floor, unconscious and all eyes on them, maybe he's right.
