othercaptjack | Jack Harkness' room :: Mid-2005 timewarp AU

Puck laughs faintly.

"Ah-- nearly, I think. Or perhaps nearly right. You have his manner about you when you speak it."

That is not exactly what he means, but it is difficult to explain the matter of names and true names and names from one's own lips. At least, it's difficult to explain it to mortals.

Though to be fair, this is the first time Puck has tried in quite a long while.

"Puck," he tries, and the timber of his voice is neither Havelock's nor Hellebore's, but there is something in the way the syllable falls that, in some way, does seem to recall them both.

It wasn't something he'd learned much about in his storm of research after first meeting Puck - but there had been something about naming there.

"Puck," says Havelock again, slow and thoughtful, and his voice is still his own, but the nuance mimics the way Puck spoke exactly.

It's not something he's had much opportunity to try, but the knack has not deserted him yet.

"Still wrong?"

His head tilts curiously, assessing.

"No," he decides after a moment.

"'Tis right as it can be, the poorly name that it is. You see, you have it of my own lips, as I have yours." His lips curl in a very slight smile, and he murmurs, "Havelock."

"Oh," says Havelock, with a prickle of wary understanding - but he holds himself still, and there doesn't seem to be a danger in this, not so far.

How must it be, to need to protect your own name, and what could you use another for, once given?

It's hard to say.

And the creature - Puck, and the name echoes very precise in his mind - did not have to teach him that.

Puck looks very amused now.

"You had best take care how you give it, and to whom. My kin wear their own names very close, but they joy in learning more."

And now he's told him that, too.

Havelock isn't quite sure how to take being handed information like that.

The same as anything else he learns, he supposes; keeping it carefully remembered but kept to himself.

"I can manage that."

Puck, meanwhile, isn't sure how to take the lack of reaction-- in this case, anyway, although what was he expecting? 'Thank you, that is very interesting'?

... Actually, that seems a sensible sort of response to him.

"Good," he says, subsiding back onto the couch with his arms over his (still bare) chest. He's only getting hungrier, but right now he doesn't at all want to risk a trip down that little hole in the wall.

Perhaps come morning.

Perhaps.

Then again, Havelock is watching him as if he can peel him open with a just a calm, level gaze.

(It's amazing how many people that actually works with, and, well - it's interesting.)

"We should be secure enough here," he says eventually. "To venture out, within reason."

"Ah?" Puck says.

"Why, do you wish a stroll beneath the moon? I have heard ours here is but a paltry imitator."

"Charming as that sounds, I have no doubt we would be shortly set upon," Havelock points out.

"No, but I think we might try the corridors, or venture down to the kitchens now. We can't stay here forever."

The fairy's stomach gives another telltale grumble.

Puck looks sulky.

"I suppose we cannot, at that. What would you?"

Havelock, with supreme self-control, does not smile.

"How are you with enclosed spaces?" he asks instead.

"Superfluous," Puck assures him in a drawl.

Havelock raises an eyebrow.

"Good," he says thoughtfully. "I don't doubt the dumbwaiter can take both our weights, but it will be close if we try it. Or do you think it wiser for one of us to go ahead alone?"

Is this the option that takes them to food?

Not that Puck cares.

... Also, he takes a moment to seriously deliberate the question. On the one hand, if something should go wrong with a precarious descent into an unknown darkness, having one person stay behind would ensure that he could offer some aid to the other, or at the very least escape his fate.

"If it shall carry us both, I see no reason to delay," he says with a shrug.

"Shall we be able to manage it?"

They are both pretty slim.

"We should," Havelock confirms, cautious but sure of his own assessment.

He's pretty good with calculations of this kind.

And he thinks it best to stick together, too.

Puck grins, a flash of teeth.

"Ought we to try, then?"

"Yes."

Well, how are the creatures going to get at them in the shafts? But once the two of them emerge, they may face a formiddable force.

Havelock intends so, at any rate.

Puck slides back out of his seat and trips along towards the aperture in the wall, glancing back at Havelock over his shoulder.

"'Twere better you should be first," he says.

Havelock is bigger. After everything he's escaped in the past day, Puck's not gonna risk dying now by getting crushed by an assassin.

Oh, now, Havelock would never crush him.

(There are so many more efficient and less risky ways to kill someone, after all.)

But Havelock only shrugs and swings himself up and onto the little platform, folding up gracefully into the small space.

Puck pauses, then follows, negotiating the remaining space with great gingerness.

He doesn't actually have to do much but clamber round him; there's room enough here that they can both fit side by side. (As long as the sides are very close indeed, and as long as Puck braces himself slightly to hold himself back.)

It is quite something, to be so near the heat of another body and the beat of another heart. Puck glances to the mortal's face, brief and wry.

Havelock obligingly shifts himself as need be, keeping flat against the sides of the shaft as far as he can - for politeness' sake.

Not that politeness holds much sway just now, and trying to hold to it too rigidly is both foolish and impossible. Still, Havelock waits a moment for Puck to settle himself - light and warm and very close - and looks back as calm and impassive as ever before reaching to shut the hatch and plunge them into near-darkness.

He would.

Puck is hardly afraid of the dark, his kin being betimes more familiar with it than the sun. However, there is little love among the fairies of the wood for metal cages.

His breath sounds loud to him on this descent, huffing off the close walls. Even the gearish creakings don't seem enough to mask it. Havelock is near and alive, and his own breathing clearly audible; Puck resists an urge, childish if he had ever been a child, to bury his face in his chest.

Admittedly, in the dark and the close, that particular tangent offers its own distractions.

Havelock appears blithely unaware of any such possible tangents, simply holding still and waiting for his eyes to adjust to the dark.

The air flickers between warm and cool as they travel between floors (the number of which seems to be prodigious) and slowly Puck appears through the gloom, in dim silhouette.

Perhaps he should have drawn a weapon before shutting the door? It is certainly too close in here to do so now.

But he thinks... maybe not.

With a rattle, the cage begins to slow, nearing the bottom of the shaft.

Puck can't quite tell what is happening; the mechanisms of the thing all seem to whirl at once, disguising their direction. When the thing gives a bump and a clank, his fingers clench abruptly over-- nothing.

But a hiss escapes his lips.

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject