sevenhorrors | but i abhor the dull routine of existence (closed)

[Oh, yes, he is very aware of her very pointed horns.]

More than just my feet, I would think, were I to fall. Try your best not to skewer me, hm?

[He is... now passing the first storey! Making good progress. Does he need to slow down for her?]

[ it may be best to; while she does not struggle to pull her own weight, she is not experienced with finding footholds. one might even say... she rolled a natural one to do so. where she currently clings to the ivy, forehead pressed to warming stone, she opens her eyes and sees a tiny little bird's nest tucked into the crevice of a window. just to her right.

it's probably nothing.

meanwhile, the man cannot stop fantasizing about plummeting back to the earth! ]

Stop! Saying this! I am going to come up there and push you, and then maybe you stop talking about falling so much.

[ here, she lifts her face and leans to look up at him. look at this face. do you think she doesn't mean that?
(she doesn't mean that.) ]

[And pauses just enough to look down at her, his hair wild and brow shining with sweat.]

Will you? Come up here? You’ve a way to go, Ms Fairplay.

[Indeed, there is a little nest tucked into the corner of a nearby windowsill, and maybe the flutter of wings, but surely it is nothing.]

[ biting him biting him biting him ]

[ hauls herself up another foot. ]

Unlike some of us, I do not spend free time climbing walls like monkey!

[wowowowowwow]

That is why your profession is not mine, now is it?

[He doesn't even bother to rebuke that he spends his free time climbing walls like a monkey — which he doesn't, by the way!!!]

[ that, she does not rise to, and instead she sets her jaw and finds another foothold and tests the ivy and angles her climb towards a break in the wall where she might take a little more solid support.

up... and up... her fingers brush another nest: this one cozied in the corner of a blown-out window. empty.

how high are they now? her back feels warmed by the sun and slick with sweat. ]

[He slows at about the halfway point along the second storey, catching his breath. Seeking a foothold beneath one foot to anchor himself.]

I've not... noticed the birds before.

[Like, the nests are obvious now. But he does not recall ever seeing them flitter around the school in the past. Where are they now? Does it matter?]

Edited (RAH BRITISH SPELLING) 2025-09-24 13:44 (UTC)

[ she, on the other hand, continues her climb. he has gained on her, and she will blame his taller frame for that. between grunts of exertion, and her eyes squinted against sunlight on the windows and her own hair strewn across her brow, ] What birds?

[ precisely.

grunts again—scraping one foot again and again and finding no easy rest. she wedges her toes, tosses her hair back over her shoulder as best she can.

and, faintly: chi... ]

Wait.

[And, ever growing not so faintly: chi… chi chi—

He waves at her to stop climbing, listening closely.]

Do you hear that?

Hear—?

[ chi... chi—! chi! danger!

a "sparrow" thumps into his back. ]

[OW HEY WHAT THE FUCK

It is more startling than anything else, between the little chirping that suddenly sounds like a word, and the sudden thunk against his back. He grips the ivy tight, absolutely refusing to let his body react in a way that might send him tumbling back down.]

Ms Fairplay! You may wish to consider heading back down!

[Oh, another thwack against the back of his neck, the flutter of feathers in his ear. And now... perhaps a couple are also extending the same courtesy to Severine.]

[ craning her head back ]

Why? What is—gack!

[ danger! chi! chi! danger! beware! a tiny bird-spirit flies full-bore into her head, bounces off, and another dives her instead. tiny legs tangling in her hair. it begins to peck her in all those thin-skinned places around the skull.

as with him, she forces her fingers tighter. overrule the instinctive desire to guard her head. each driving impact of a tiny beak is a blister of pain, and Severine ducks her face forward against one arm, muscles trembling with the effort of remaining still. ]

[Chi! Danger! Chi! Chi! Over and over again, little chirping words of warning, he cannot have heard it wrong multiple times. These birds, their number growing even in the few moments that it takes him to think this, are offering some kind of aid. Beware of what? What exists atop the roof?

And yet what an irony it is for that aid to be twisted around as little wings beating against them, little bodies slamming into his back and neck, sharp little beaks suddenly stinging at exposed skin — notably, his hands.

They are trying to knock them down.]

Down! [He instructs her as he clings, as he's barraged by peck peck pecking attacks by tiny sparrows.] Back down!

[Easier said than done amid the flurry, so here's hoping they angled the mattress just right.]

[ it is nightmarish. the heat of the sun, it seems to blot out behind a sudden cloud, and if he were to chance a look (but why would he), he would see only a swarm, utterly bent on throwing themselves upon them both.

they land in her hair and jab at her scalp. they are making quick work of her horns and her hands. they are hitting the sides of the building with horrible bodily thumps and then wheeling about to swoop again. again. again. danger! danger! chi!

they have to get down. makes a painful, wordless sound of agreement and strains her foot lower, seeking the foothold she'd just left behind.

finds... nothing. it's gone. she must have—shifted to the side during the climb?! all the weight she'd expected to hold instead scrapes frightfully against decaying brick and she drops a few inches, sending a sudden pain lightning-bolting into her shoulders, and the vines strain and stretch and groan and Severine gasps and then moans and scrabbles both feet to find purchase, and she clings as tightly as she can to the ivy, and she can feel the beaks boring away into her hands— ]

Ah! Ahh-h-h-h—!

[This has gone to hell in a hand basket quite quickly, hasn't it?

He doesn't have the chance to glance down at her; it feels as though any angle in which he does not keep his face pressed to the ivy, these wretched little birds will peck at it. Already, the scrapes of talons and beaks across his cheekbones, the back of his neck, his fingers which cling to the ivy and lose their grip under their assault.]

Just-!

[Just what? What does one do in a situation like this? He feels the ivy below rustle and tug at his own section with worrying force, meaning that she is struggling below; that perhaps some of her own purchase is snapping away from the building this very moment.

He tries to step down amid the storm of wings and chirps of danger assailing him. Finds himself misstepping and sliding down a few feet, taking ivy with him. The birds, of course, only follow, undeterred.]

Aim for the mattress!

[The dread acceptance of the fact that they are going to fall at this rate.]

[ forget Moriarty—if the yosuzume had been at the Reichenbach Falls, Holmes would have been gone for good.

and, soon, Severine thinks she will be falling, too. grunting and groaning and panting and scuffing her feet, she can find nothing to brace herself upon without raising her head to look for it. the hard thock thock thock of demon birds hammering at her horns.

whatever Adair says... whips past her like wind. she hears it but cannot do anything useful with it, because she can't even get a good look at where the mattress is below them. her heart struggles up into her throat. sweat-slick and burning hot, her fingers slip on the ivy. something snaps—a vine. the end comes away from the window ledge above them and its end falls and hangs limp across her.

then another.
and a third.

this, of all things, prompts her to throw her head back and look.

they're—? ]

They— [ oh, no ] they're chewing through—

[ s

n

a

p ]

[Amid the chaos, somehow, the finality of that last snap! cuts through everything else, and Holmes twists his body to look down at her. It is an unwise decision, angling more of his body to the sparrows, which flood down with more ferocity than before, pecking at every exposed part, but he has to see if she has fallen. His heart leaps up and jams stuck in his throat to realize that it is inevitable, time slowing as he watches the ivy break and unfurl and go peeling off the walls with her still clinging fruitlessly to it.]

Ms Fairplay!

[God, is the mattress still directly below them? She did not wish to follow directly beneath, so they took the risk of not landing squarely onto the damn thing, which was foolish of them to do, and now-

The ivy beneath his own grip strains, accosted by a group of sparrows which cling to it and peck peck peck peck peck inches above. He barely has time to look up and realize it before-

snap snap snap-

The dizzying sensation of tilting back and down, at the mercy of gravity, the start of a fall feeling like an age. And he can only think of her position, in relation to him, and the chance that this might be a lucky fall... or an awful one.]

Hell!

[ the vines have gone. they are falling. the birds take to the air in that preternatural murmuration and remain, roiling upon themselves yet no longer assaulting, and Severine falls.

and Kieran Adair falls.

the entire world goes mute, and honey-slow, and as she gazes up at him above her, and then the sky beyond that, she sees... a flicker of flame... beyond the lip of the rooftop. ]

—Hha—

[ and with a sickening thud, she plummets. hits the mattress. something in her body pops, and she cries out like a wounded fox. ]

Auuw! Augh—

[This is hardly what Holmes would call a great height, given his previous experiences, but the body doesn't care — the swoop in his stomach and the hot spike of adrenaline that rushes through every vein is the same. Gravity drags him down, and he sees the birds take formation overhead in a fascinating way, strangely able to appreciate it even as he plummets down in nigh slow-time.

(But there, just beyond the lip of the roof, he spies something else, too: a flame. Gold and flickering.)

Time speeds up again.

Holmes twists his body mid-air, his mind immediately dictating that he make the breadth of his landing as small as possible. So he can hit the mattress fully; so he can avoid her. He does the first. He does not entirely manage the second.

THUNK

A hard land on his side, the force harshest against his hip and shoulder. The latter slams into her with the heaviness of not-enough-dispersed weight, and he cries out in shock and a sudden burst of pain, the wind knocked out of him.

But. No joints popping or bones cracking for him.]

[ she has curled in on herself, hugging the offending arm to her belly, when Mister Adair's weight comes cracking down onto her. the pain she already felt keen intensifies, white-hot, with a sudden audible snap and a feeling in her gut like she might be sick. ]

Agh— shluha vokzal'naja!

[ he will feel her seize beneath him, and hear the element of agony in her tone. her profanity takes on an upturn at the end, a squeak of pain nearing tears. but then she's grabbing for his arm, his body, anything, with her other hand. trying to feel him out. is he okay? ]

[He does not think that is a cry he will forget for a long time. It practically resonates in his skull.

And yet, she must be pushing past the pain to feel out any injuries of his own. Beyond the ache in his shoulder and hip, throbbing hard and like someone slid a knife between his bones, there is nothing else informing his brain of injury. She will find no proof of anything out of place while she feels out arms and shoulders and neck and head.

He is just... dazed.]

Ms... Nngh.

[No, she is the one hurt. He heard that snap. With a dizzying effort, he tries to push himself up on an elbow.]

I'm fine, but you—

[Those sharp eyes raking across her for anything out of place. How's the state of that shoulder?]

[ um, bad. a complete dislocation; that much is evident even lying down. the arm hangs low—too low—and Severine's face has twisted up in agony. her cheeks are slick with sweat, shining in the warming sun. ]

K—hhaah. [ it's not even words which scrape through the rictus of her grimace. she can't speak, she can't think. hard-and-heavy breaths through her nose, shuddering on the exhale through her mouth. ] It's—broken.

[ oh... it's too bright out here. he is like a dark shadow looming over her. ]

[Very bad. He’s seen more gruesome things, of course, but there is nothing like the sight of a completely dislocated shoulder that can make even Sherlock Holmes wince — internally, at least.

Externally, he is immediately straightening, ignoring his own pain, his hands hovering over that too-low arm. He still feels disoriented, nerves alight in a not very pleasant way, but he chooses to focus on her and her only.]

Dislocated.

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