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Fjord tries hard not to tic in crowded places. He keeps the urge to make strange noises down his throat, keeps the urge to thump his fist against his chest in his pocket. It works sometimes — most of the time. (He’s gotten good at suppressing it.) But sometimes the movement comes quick and sudden, and he can’t stop it, and a passerby stares. And fjord wants the ground to swallow him whole.
It’s harder to keep it all in check when he’s tired though.
So, as the Nein wander sunset-lit Zadash streets, searching for somewhere to stay, he keeps to the occasional grunt and eye-roll, a tilt of his head once or twice. Thank gods.
But by the time they all pay for rooms he’s exhausted. And then, there’s another thing to think about — Mr. Clay stepping slowly up the stairs behind him, staff clunking against the worn old wood. A different person. A new person to have to try explain things to.
( “I couldn’t give a flying fuck what kind of weird shite you get up to,” Molly had said, and gone back to sipping stolen wine. “No offence.” )
At least he wasn’t bothered.
•••
Clay sits on the bed on the opposite side of the small room, looking at the strange things he’d bought, or found, on their way through the city — loops of coloured string, glass beads, and a little wooden spoon. He spits on a muddy piece of broken pottery and cleans it with his sleeve.
(He’d picked it up off the cobbled street earlier, and Jester had said “Yuck. It’s so dirty, Caduceus,” and he’d smiled in a bemused sort of way, holding it in his hand as they walked.)
Eventually he finishes cleaning the shard and sets it on the bed with his other small things. Then he just starts staring at nothing again, as he has done since he met them. It’s …weird.
Fjord follows his line of sight to the empty wall by the window, to look at the rough texture and nothing else at all.
Great. Definitely haunted.
Clay stays that way for a while.
Because it’s quiet and his new roommate is seemingly occupied, Fjord gets to work taking his armour off, which is a struggle with tired, calloused hands. A whole lot of buckles and ties. Lots of heavy old boots. (He’s sweaty beneath his undershirt).
There’s a humming from across the room, gentle and nonsensical. Clay’s closed his eyes and he’s started waving his hands around like Caleb does, but less panicked and more like he’s threading his fingers through the room’s dusty air.
Fjord can’t stop himself from thumping a hand against his chest, the sound of a fist against tough leather filling the room. Then he realises. And he does it again.
Clay’s long ears flick towards him.
Fjord clears his throat. “Sorry,” he mumbles, and begins to pull off his breastplate.
Clay turns slowly to look at him, or, right through him. “Ah, that’s alright,” he replies. He smiles softly, as always, and flaps a hand beside his ear.
Beau said they found him in a cemetery (a graveyard, Clay had corrected) deep inside the dying forest, flowers growing from the graves. Not a single thing about that comforts Fjord, and he wonders, almost entirely genuinely, if their new acquaintance might be a strange (scary) creature disguised as a firbolg, wearing it’s fur like a coat. Because he doesn’t recall any of the Pumats or … Nila (was that her name?)… having the same uncanny look about them. Clay takes people apart with his pale, staring eyes. And notices everything. It’s… fucking ridiculous.
Then Clay laughs and Fjord startles, suddenly self-conscious, looking himself up and down. But Clay’s not looking at him, just digging through his pack, pulling out tangled clothes.
Fjord sighs, shakes his head. Yawns.
“Guess it’s about bedtime,” Clay says, and groans as he pushes himself up and off the bed. His head just about touches the ceiling.
“Yeah, it’s gettin’ late,” Fjord replies. He turns to the corner to slip out of his tunic and into a bed-shirt as quickly as possible, leaving the undershirt that flattens his chest on beneath it. He’ll take it off later, once he’s hidden under darkness and blankets — he’s not ready for someone new to know. Not yet.
Fjord keeps his eyes on the floorboards as he pulls off his boots and trousers, and hopes that Clay will in fact sleep with clothes on. Unlike — unlike some people.
“Would you like me to change somewhere else?” Clay asks.
There it is again — he’s got to be a mindreader or some other spooky shit.
“Uh, that’s alright,” Fjord says before he can think about it. “Just let me know when you’re, uh.. decent.”
Clay laughs softly. “Oh. I haven’t even taken off all my armour yet… hands are a sort of shaky today.”
Fjord looks up from the dead spider in the corner and up even further to Clay, still untying the ties on his breastplate. His spaulders and shield lie on the bed already, strange lichen creeping across them in branches and blooms. Fjord’s skin crawls at the aliveness of it all.
Clay’s still struggling with the tie beneath his arm, that connects the back and front of his armour. Then he tilts his head toward his shoulder, then again, and again. He gets stuck in it for a moment, repeating the movement, nose scrunched, in a way that’s all too familiar to Fjord.
Finally, as he gets the tie undone, Clay looks up, grin small and apologetic.
“That hasn’t happened for a while,” he muses, and Fjord’s not sure if he’s talking to himself or not. He tilts his head once more, brow furrowed, and goes back to humming and taking off his armour.
And then it’s Fjord’s head that tilts sharply towards his own shoulder, several times over. He stops it the fourth time (mostly) so that he just twitches, the movement less sharp.
He clears his throat a few times. Grinds his teeth.
Tilts his head. Blinks hard.
Clears his throat.
(Hopes Clay wasn’t watching all of that.)
Clears his throat.
“Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to—” says Clay. “…That’s not great.”
He’s stripped down to just an undervest and his swirl-patterned trousers now, setting out a tea set as he crouches on the floor. His ears flick as Fjord moves, as the floorboards creak beneath them both.
“Huh?” Fjord replies (eventually), and blinks hard again. Tilts his head.
“Set them off,” Clay clarifies. “Your tics, I mean.”
Fjord’s ears get hot and he decides to focus on arranging his bedroll on top of the inn’s untrustworthy bedsheets. “You noticed?” He asks, faux-casual.
Clay laughs softly, not unkindly.
“Oh… Yes. Of course—” Fjord shakes his head at himself. “You notice everything.”
“Not everything,” Clay says, even though he keeps finding tiny earrings between paving stones, and secrets between passersby.
He smiles, remorseful, as Fjord thumps a first against his chest for what feels like the hundredth time, and then tilts his own head.
“Oh boy,” he mumbles after a moment of repeating it, followed by a hum and a Frumpkin-like prrrp. He flaps his hands in front of his chest.
Fjord sighs a small laugh, and gives Clay the sympathetic, exasperated look of people sharing the same odd experience.
“That’s… That’s a thing,” says Clay.
Fjord laughs properly then, partly at the ridiculous of it all and the fact that he’s so tired, but mostly out of the relief that he isn’t being judged. He clears his throat again and cad offers, after he’s stared at the wall for another minute or so, that he makes them both tea.