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She shook her head at his question, the motion deliberate as if to actively dispel the very idea of ownership. "Have one of your dear friends here have ever confessed to you about having affinity to large quantities of water?" she said, her voice laced with dry amusement, "Besides, if one of them were mine I suspect they would have long since learned the folly of expecting affection from me." The words she spoke were light, but there was an edge to them. A quiet acknowledgment of the truth of having spent a lifetime ensuring nothing and no one could be a weakness. Cats, with their fickle loyalties, were no exception.

“They don’t confess much to me at all, save that they are hungry and want their supper immediately,” Aled replies with a gentle huff of laughter, “Though I would've thought a cat eminently suitable for a person that guards their affections, independent as they so often are. Most of the strays I have encountered are not as friendly as this one - nor quite so demanding.” As if on cue, the ginger cat starts rubbing itself furiously against Aled’s legs, beginning its pitiful meowing anew, as if he might’ve somehow forgotten about him in the thirty seconds since he stopped stroking him.

At the mention of the decorating effort that has been undertaken throughout the city, Aled glances guiltily upwards at the eaves of his shop, which remain conspicuously unadorned. Every year he leaves it later and later to hang up his garlands, and even then, his heart is never truly in it. In truth, his plans for the evening had largely entailed making another visit to the Passiflora, but that isn’t something he could reasonably call pressing, nor is it something he means to share with Iris, who is all but a stranger.

the more he's here in novigrad, the more axsel longs for his way back home. the heat in this place is nearly unbearable at this time but what is he to do? some things are more important than the weather. and despite all that he feels, patience is all he is forced to have, but that doesn't mean he will stay idle, no. if they call for his restraints, he will make his time in this town worth it, by drinking, laying gwent, taking contracts around and enjoying the brothels.

kingfisher inn is already packed full of people and the solstice hasn't even started yet. between patrons getting drinks and people dancing around trying to get others to spend more of their coin. "and i'll be taking this, thank you." axsel grinned from ear to ear as he won another game of gwent from a poor patron, when he saw in the corner of his eye yair.

"old man!" he called out, there was now a chair available now that the loser got up and left. "come, i'll buy you a drink." he gave the man a cocky grin. "game of gwent? i warn you though, i'll probably win."

Usually Yair would not dignify that particular form of address with anything less than a broken fucking nose, but the familiar, unexpected voice that pricks his ears is enough to give him pause, and when he wheels around to see the upstart young Griffin from Larvik, he groans. "Fuck me," But there's no real bite in his words and, in spite of his complaint, it isn't such a terrible thing to see Axsel on this side of the Great Sea - not that he'd ever tell him that, of course, "They've finally kicked you off of Skellige, have they? What happened, they run out of drowners for you to wave your sword at? Thought you'd come and play with the big boys for a change?"

He sits heavily in the offered chair and makes himself right at home, looking over the ruins of the finished gwent game with a critical eye. As a rule, Yair tries not to commit himself to cards at the start of an evening, simply because it's proven an extremely efficient way to get himself thrown out of the tavern before he's had the chance to even get halfway drunk, but... he's never not risen to meet a challenge, which Axsel knows as well as anybody.

"Offence?" Dorian barked a quiet laugh, the word bearing so little relevance to him. It would have been a tiring long life indeed if he was so easily vexed. "No, no, it rather sparks... curiosity." He licked his lips, his fingers stroking the soft edge of the chair's arm. "Perhaps watching is exactly what you wish to pay for." He gave a shrug, it would be of no consequence to Dorian if that was how he wished to spend his money. But he felt like there was more, something he wanted to push for.

"But you yourself admit hesitance. Why?" He tilted his head, his dark eyes pinned on the other's face, trying to read between the lines. "I assure you there is no judgement here." He placed a hand over his chest, as if to solidify the statement. "If you let me help you, I can see to it that you are entirely satisfied." Not to mention that he liked to pry, to learn people's secrets no matter how dark they were. The darker the better, in fact, for a man like Dorian.

The fluidity of the man's movements draws Aled's gaze, his blue eyes lingering over the languorous sprawl of one that seems completely at ease within his own body, the chair he sits in and the room around them a natural extension of himself. It is something to be envied. It is something to be admired.

"To watch others? If that was my desire, I need not have ventured as far as Gildorf to see it sated," he says with a soft, humourless laugh. No, he could've remained inside his shop, separated from the denizens of this city by a sheet of glass, a voyeur to the life he privately fears he has forgotten how to live. It certainly would've been cheaper. "To be watched myself..." Aled considers the idea, and it is closer, but it still sits ill upon his shoulders, and he ultimately shakes his head, "No, that is not quite it either."

At the question, Aled shifts in his seat, instinctively angling his body towards the man as if they spoke in complete privacy, as if they were long-time confidants and not mere strangers. It is a strange compulsion, to bear your soul to someone you don't know, who professes not to judge. Perhaps this is why some people pray.

"In truth, I don't know if I can be helped," he admits in that same quiet, pensive tone, tracking the movement of the man's hand as it alights upon his chest, "I suppose I am coming to terms with the fact that what I want cannot be found here, or anywhere else." If it was as simple as sex, he would've gone with the beautiful Flower that first approached him, and been grateful to lose an hour in his company. "Perhaps it goes back to what you said before - not to be watched, but to be seen. Known. I spend a great deal of time thinking about words as vessels for need and intent, but is it not possible to speak without speaking, and to be understood?"

It is interesting, how many Witchers seem to be in town. Perhaps concerning. They tend to celebrate with the same enthusiasm with which they fight, and their hard drinking ways often encourage humans to drink harder too. Hubris is not a quality Danica has ever particularly understood, but she's seen it often enough.

Though, this particular Witcher that has caught her eye does not look to be particularly revelrous. School of the Cat, she observes, regarding his medallion. She has met many of that school throughout her years, and they typically tend to be of a more dangerous ilk than the others. That is not, of course, to say that Witchers of other schools are harmless. Quite the reverse. But those of the School of the Cat always seem to exist just a little farther outside the peripheries of respectability than the others.

Though he is acutely aware of the woman's gaze upon him, Yair has elected to ignore it, having quickly decided that she poses him no real threat and more than used to being stared at by now. He is focused, instead, on the crowd bustling through the market thoroughfare, his yellow eyes flickering restlessly from face to face in search of one in particular. If they were here, he'd know - he'd be able to smell them - but that reality does not keep him from looking anyway.

"It probably is," he says, turning at the sound of the woman's voice to consider her soft, round face and imagining the hundreds of years that surely span between them. Yair doesn't even know how old he is, not truly, but his own features have been well-weathered by time and hard living in a way that hers have not.

Passiflora's energy pulsed with electricity, the brewing celebrations in Novigrad making footfall heavier through its gilded doors. It appeared religion made people want to fuck. That, or the heat sticking to the air outside. Truthfully it could have been any number of reasons, and really it didn't matter — Dorian loved the way things picked up in the summer, the smell of sweat magnified, the rush of blood.

But despite its hum of business, his attention was caught on the figure seated in the corner making what looked to be polite conversation with a Flower, seeming to keep watching the room go by as he was. Only this man's shoulders were rigid, his brow set and his eyes wide, the polar opposite to Dorian who moved with fluidity to the rhythm he knew so well. He did not belong here, that much was obvious. The reason for his coming, then, intrigued Dorian.

He slipped through the crowd with ease, reaching the chairs and placing his hand on the arm of the Flower. A cue, subtle as anything, for them to move. This man was his now, for tonight. "Do you enjoy my theatre?" Dorian purred, sliding into the seat beside him and eyeing him with a darkness he ought to be careful not to fall too deep into. "I only call it such because I have seen you here, watching, and yet you haven't touched. Do my Flowers not please you?"

It is difficult not to feel out of place in this opulently-appointed room. In comparison with the Passiflora's other, far grander clientele, Aled imagines he must seem rather shabby, little more than a dust-grey ghost best blown back out into the balmy summer evening and forgotten. The Flower that has been keeping him company has made a truly admirable effort to coax him out of himself, but it isn't any good, and he has already made up his mind to leave the moment he can do so politely. It was foolish of him to come here in the first place.

And then, just as he is gathering the will to walk away, the air shifts. The Flower is dismissed without a word, and in his place is a dark, handsome man whose eyes glitter with something decadent and sinful. Aled knows the owner of the brothel by reputation - an unapologetic hedonist who, if a certain set is to be believed, is single-handedly driving Novigrad into the depths of depravity - but he never really expected to meet him, and certainly never expected to find himself pinned beneath his gaze, as he is now.

As Blaer, they were a completely different creature of the stage. Musician, bard, actor. Their own piece was in the works, to debut by summer’s end. Whenever the audience cheered after a performance, they took it all in, no sense of flustering or humility. Who could have a troubled soul when music and poetry filled the air?

A deep bow, peacocking at best, Blaer walked towards the edge of the stage. As he looked up, his eyes locked on an unsuspecting patron. A cocky smirk appeared on their lips.

“What can I do for you, love?”

Cultural pursuits aren't exactly high on the list of things Yair bothers to engage with whenever he finds himself in the city - not when there are brothels to visit and taverns to be thrown out of - but he has never been able to resist the pull of a crowd, the allure of a little fucking commotion, no matter its source.

He doesn't join the audience until the show is practically over, a dark blemish on the tapestry of otherwise colourfully-attired townspeople, his yellow eyes tracking the performer as they readily command the stage. He realises he's seen them before, years ago, out on the road, though their costumes were not quite so elaborate back then - it's easy to forget, sometimes, how quickly humans change.

Small Hands | Keaton Henson