2017-03-15: The Quick and the Damned

• Log: The Quick and the Damned
• Cast:Jude Moshe, Cassidy Cain
• Where: Gentleman's Alley, Adlehyde
• Date: March 15, 2017
• Summary: A bit of mayhem and mischief pushes Jude Moshe, traveling journalist, in the orbit of con artist and adventurer, Cassidy Cain. At the discovery that her meddlings in the local parish may have saved the lives of a few of his contacts, Jude decides to insert himself in her affairs, with the two forming a partnership of sorts. In other words, mistakes were made.

---

<Pose Tracker> Cassidy Cain has posed.

She hasn't stopped laughing since she arrived at the tables, prompting a slightly apprehensive and skeptical look from the dealer, who had closed his station for a few minutes to take a well-deserved break...and handle his hysterical visitor.

He was tall, lean and youthful, dressed in a neatly-pressed shirt, waistcoat and black slacks, dark hair slicked back from his forehead by way of product. 'Crenshaw' is embossed proudly on the metal nametag pinned on his top lapel, and while he is presently busy pouring the woman a drink, his gloved hand hesitates, eyeballing the tumbler, and the rolling waves of mirth coming from the green-eyed woman across from him, and wonders whether he ought to set aside the bottle for now.

But the signs were all there. Crenshaw had known Cassidy Cain for years, memories laced with smoke and remembered bouts of insomnia-induced delirium borne from late nights running Nortune's gambling circuits back when the two of them were much younger, though it has been several years since he had last seen her. She has not changed, he muses, equal parts affection and exasperation; still with the ever-present smile and the glint of a demon's own mischief in her eyes. Still with her guns, still with her leathers and the lighter that she fiddles with obsessively on one hand.

She had come to see him a day or two ago, asking him for an introduction - a favor of sorts, between herself and the madame of the local orphanage, a woman with whom he has had a fair amount of intimate interludes in the past. He obliged her, because of course he did; on her worst day, Cassidy still manages to be convincing, and he thought, at the time, that the request was of little consequence. Relatively harmless, really.

Her laugh, though. It only means one thing that could span over a few other things and he already /knows/ that he doesn't want to know but has to ask, because he's an idiot and can't help his fool self.

"What did you do /now/?"

~*~

LOCAL PARISH OF THE CHURCH OF NISAN
AN HOUR AGO

His sermon over, the deacon closed the book reverently, situating it on the podium in front of him. "Let us now rise and hear today's hymnal," he had said solemnly. "Sung today by our special guests, the children of Abernathy Orphanage."

Fresh, innocent faces lifted when they were called, at the side of the room as all eyes turn to them in varying degrees of sympathy and pompous pity from the decadently-dressed socialites in attendance that had requested this private service, all expensive furs and gleaming pearls. Silent, entitled expectation filled the church's interior.

The oldest child turned to the rest and nodded. Hands clasped together in front of them in overt reverence, mouths opened and heavenly voices poured into the chamber:

~My fur coat's sold
Oh Lord ain't it cold
But I'm not gonna holla
Cause I've still got a gella
And when I get low
OoooOoooOooh, I get hiiiiighhhhh....!~

Dumbstruck, the audience stared at the orphans. This was /not/ the hymnal they were promised. The deacon's jaw dropped open.

~My man walked out
Now you know that ain't right
He better watch out
If I meet him tonight
I said when I get low
OoooOooOoooh, I get hiiiiighhhhh...!~

As outraged cries and wailing lamentations over the corruption of today's youth spill over expensive marble floors and columns, a slender figure moves deeper into the building to slip inside the deacon's office, where his desk, and piles of his personal correspondences, sat waiting for her perusal.

~*~

NOW

Cassidy presses her hand helplessly against her face, pale cheeks set on fire by mirth, gold-flecked emerald irises glistening with unshed tears. Fingers reach for the glassine tumbler in front of her, already filled with whatever whiskey-swill Crenshaw keeps underneath his stall, but she hasn't taken a sip yet. Because she can't, not without spilling everything; remembering the things the peacocks said in those hallowed halls stitches fire and pain through the cage of her ribs, and the /lyrics/! She knows the words by heart, even performed it in the days of her wayward youth, but now, /now/ it's attached to a story and the memory of having learned it has just risen in new heights of sentimental value.

"N...nothing..." she gasps. "Just...just the usual...sacrilege and...moral corruption of our youth..." Words uttered by the deacon himself, except his had more exclamation points in the end, and certainly more fury. The memory of it causes her eyes to water again, giving up on taking a drink /entirely/ in favor of burying her face in both her hands.

Words that don't allay Crenshaw's suspicions in the slightest. After a long, level look at his visitor, he states flatly, and with certainty:

"You're a menace."

A single eye peers at him from between long pale fingers, hands half-hiding a smile that cuts like a knife.

"Ay? Dinnae hear any complaints yet."

"That's because you've not gotten me in trouble yet, but I'm /sure/ it's coming." He angles her a curious look. "Did you find what you were looking for?"

Cassidy finally reclaims her glass, inspecting the fiery-amber liquid within. "Hn? Sommat like that," she murmurs, eyes lifting, smile unwavering. "Wanna bet on it?"

"Please. I know a sucker's bet when I see one." Crenshaw lifts a deck of cards, brows winging upward in an inquiring fashion. "A hand or three? For old times' sake?"

"Mmhm. Sure."

<Pose Tracker> Jude Moshe has posed.

'That's because you've not gotten me in trouble yet, but I'm /sure/ it's coming.'

And, as if a magic and esoteric word were uttered full of arcane power unknowable and ominous, Crenshaw offers up a hand or three. For old times' sake. Sure, says Cassidy.

"Sounds exciting. Wouldn't mind taking you up on that too," says the smooth voice of a stranger just behind her.

Right on cue.

                                                   B e f o r e                                                     

"We really can't keep opening our doors to you like this, Jude."

"Wow. Talk about irony."

Sequestered toward the back of a small local parish of the Nisan Orthodoxy is a room, dusky and dank and cramped with heat and claustrophobic design. It's a forgotten part of the Church where the priests come to count their alms before squirreling them somewhere safe -- to be used for charity, and the needy, of course. An offering plate rests comfortably on a nearby desk as if to attest to its purpose, glittering with silvery gella coins.

"Yes. I'm sure it's incredibly ironic to you. Now just... keep still."

It is not, however, currently being used to count the coffers of the faithful.

Leaning his weight into the aging groan of the office's wooden chair, a man with dark red hair and amber eyes stares with almost nonchalant blandness at the tiny door leading to the freedom of the outside world. The casualness of his expression is punctuated by a wince here, a "hey, watch it!" there, as a servant of the Orthodoxy crouches down beside him. A younger man, overweight with cheap spectacles resting on the bridge of his freckled nose, works a needle and thread with careful and confident fingers -- threading them through flesh and muscle, rather than fabric.

"Don't know what you'd call it, anyway. I'm just a helpless sinner in need of salvation. C -- seriously, don't -push- that hard, you're gonna make it worse -- ... c'mon -- how can you turn that away?"

"The only salvation you need is free medical attention," the bespectacled man grouses. He peruses the numerous injuries scoring the redhead's lean figure -- burn marks, cuts, a bullet wound here and there -- and what looks like corrosion from some sort of chemical acid. It's far from pleasant. "I doubt you've even legitimately looked for salvation in your entire life."

"Ouch," winces the redhead, perfectly timed to the jab of the needle. "Shouldn't you be seeing this time as an opportunity to convert me, then? You're a real poor man of the cloth."

"And you're a poor journalist."

"Hah. Got me there. Guess we're both just getting what we deserve, then."

The priest shoots a glare, just as he finishes tending to those injuries. The red-haired man looks down at his bandaged figure with a satisfied smile, leaning in with the slightest wince as he snatches up his shirt.

"You're still going to need to rest that off. Don't strain yourself. And for God's sake, would you stop-- "

And that is when cries of doom and catastrophe reach even the dimmest, dankest corners forgotten even by the church. The redheaded man's amber gaze shutters in a blink as he looks above him as if he could -see- the outrage firsthand. He blinks. Grabs a large weapon instead of that shirt.

"Wh--"

"Stay here."

The door creaks open. And deep within the forgotten corners of the Nisan parish, Jude Moshe bears witness to trouble condensed into blonde form wander her way towards the deacon's office with a sense of purpose. Amber eyes widen. His head tilts.

"Wh-- what's going on?" wonders the faithful man behind him.

"... Nothing," Jude assures, slowly, "... just the usual sacrilege and moral corruption of our youth."

"...?"

And just like that, Jude Moshe is swinging his shirt back on, ignoring the pain as he buttons it up with all due haste. He barges his way out of the cramped room. The door slams.

...

... and exactly two seconds pass before it opens just far enough for Moshe to lean in, reach out, and cram a fistful of gella from the offering plate against his needy palm.

"Dammit Jude, you can't--"

"I'm one of your lost sheep, right? Just consider this headway into the debt you people already owe me."

"B--"

SLAM.

Which brings us to...

                                                      N o w                                                        

Old, rusty coins hit the surface of the dealer's table from the hands of a man in need as Jude Moshe settles in comfortably at the very closed table like he always belonged there.

"Heya. Nice set up you've got here, uh... Cren... shaw...? Is that right? Crenshaw?" he greets easily, his expression friendly even as he squints at that nametag. He even waggles a few, bandaged fingers in greeting before the red-haired man sits back and waits. Expectantly. Hands stuffed in his pockets and brows lifted at poor Crenshaw to complement a most affable grin. "Lure 'em in with a pretty face and then take 'em for all they're worth, right? Well, you've got me hook, line and sinker."

The friendly wink he offers Cassidy Cain's way is, of course, gratis.

"Deal me in. I'm kinda in the mood for a sucker's bet today."

<Pose Tracker> Cassidy Cain has posed.

Crenshaw sees the newcomer well before Cassidy does, though he hardly expected him to wander up to the table just like that. He has the little flag after all, a fiery streamer as dark-crimson as Jude's hair, indicative that the dealer was either presently at break due to personal reasons or engaged in congress with a pit boss, but considering that his golden-haired visitor does not, in fact, sport the familiar black-jacket and red pocket square that denotes the gambling den's overseers, chances are he is most definitely entertaining a personal acquaintance. Hence, he is extremely puzzled when Jude /doesn't/ decide to move on, and instead takes up a chair near his companion, currency rolling over green felt and glinting dully in the faint illumination of lamps lit to chase off the shadows of the encroaching evening. The journalist would find him frowning at him, dark brows knit.

Cassidy's face lends quickly to expression; there is curiosity there when the amber-eyed stranger joins them, though his presence does manage to temper her earlier hysterical amusement. She tilts her head back and exhales, a finger lifting to brush knuckles away moisture beaded at the corners of those almost-feline tilts, a look shot over long fingers and exchanged with the dealer, who turns to address Jude.

"Sorry, man," he begins. "But this table's cl-- "

"Ach, Crennie, /manners/," comes the easy chiding. "S'bad luck to be inhospitable in some parts of the world, y'ken. Wouldnae want that hovering about your table, methinks." A palm skates over her hip to produce a torn packet of smokes, pink lips and white teeth ensnaring the top of a cigarette and setting it on the felt. The friendly wink angled her way has her smile pulling up higher, open, brilliant and accented by pearly edges. " 'Sides, the more the merrier. You know what they say about suckers, and he /did/ just call you pretty."

There's a pause. Giving Jude a look askance, Crenshaw shifts slightly away from the redhaired man and closer towards the blonde.

"I." Spoken with the long-suffering exasperation of a man who recognizes that he is besieged from both sides. "Am /not/ pretty."

"Nae?" Cassidy tugs her cigarette to the corner of her mouth to make room for the grin that follows. "Shouldnae sell yourself short that way, lad. I think you're /verra/ pretty."

"You." A finger points to Jude. "/Not/ interested. And /you/." The finger shifts to Cassidy. "Can shut the hell up." Picking up the deck of cards, he shuffles them expertly with his fingers, with a speed and dexterity that suggests a degree of expertise in spite of his youthful appearance. He cuts, tucks, and shuffles again, spraying cardboard from one end of his palm to another. "But since I'm cutting my break short and working again, the game's your not-so-classic five-card stud. Nothing wild, though considering /certain/ personages in this august company of blatantly obvious ne'erdowells, pretty sure that won't stop anyone. If you know what I mean."

Cassidy inclines her head towards Jude at that, unlit cigarette dangling from her mouth. "He means he fully expects ever'abody in this table to be a low down filthy cheater," she tells him, her fingers lowering while Crenshaw deals in an attempt to find her lighter. "The surface game's to get a superior hand, the /real/ game is to cheat in getting there without Crenshaw here noticing. Dinnae let that babyface fool you, luv. You're looking at a champion, verra pretty face and all."

"That's it," Crenshaw grumbles sullenly, tossing out the cards. "I'm growing a beard. Considering I haven't been able to grow much of a wisp since I was seventeen, the results should be horrific enough to put a stop to this manpretty business. Starting bet's ten gella, 'cause I'm feeling generous." Dark eyes fall on Cassidy. "/Champion/ and all."

"Mmm." There's an incline of the woman's head at that, gold-flecked eyes glinting from under the shadows of her wide-brimmed hat. One that Cassidy doffs off the top of her head, to hook into the left spoke of her chair. A hand drops on her pile of cards, though she doesn't look at them yet.

"I'll call," she says. "And raise ten more. What the hell? I'm in a verra good mood today." Her face turns towards Jude. "Maybe it's contagious, though it could go either way - people who take sucker's bets are generally either high or low on life. So which are you today, luv?"

<Pose Tracker> Jude Moshe has posed.

Perfectly innocent confusion etches its way across Jude Moshe's face as Crenshaw affixes that frowning stare at him, as if for all the world he couldn't imagine what he could have done to earn that suspicious scorn. "Easy, friend," he wards off affably, hands lifting up in a gesture of appeasement. "Didn't your dad ever tell you looks can kill?"

And so Crenshaw, perhaps wisely, starts to warn him off politely -- but before he can, in comes the woman with the golden hair to save the day. The redheaded stranger blinks, looking Cassidy's way as she offers that olive branch -- comes to his defense. "Yeah, Crennie. /Manners,/" echoes Jude with that ineffably easy-going smile tugging at the corners of his lips; fingerless-gloved hands lift to lock at the back of his messy mop of red hair... only to blink once at Cassidy's bold claim.

'... and he /did/ just call you pretty.'

A second passes, wherein Jude Moshe stares at Crenshaw with an expression so inscrutable it could mean nothing. Or it could mean -everything-. Exactly one second.

The kiss he blows the other man's way is timed to absolute perfection for the exact moment the dealer starts to slide away from him.

Smile!

"It's the eyes, I think," he confides in Cassidy like someone discussing the finer points of a statue as he levels a critical, amber eye on Crenshaw. "Eyes like that, I just know they're gonna break my heart, but I can't help myself. What can I say? I'm a glutton for punishment."

He delivers all of this, perfectly straight-faced, without even the slightest hitch or smile. There's even a wistful sigh to punctuate it all, perfectly placed at the end of Crenshaw's denial. "Just makes me want 'em all the more," he laments. But it's only when the cards start to be dealt that his lips break into a grin that exposes pearly white teeth.

And so the hand is dealt, even as Jude nods comfortably to the rules, only putting forth a hurt aside of, "Hey, hey -- I've got myself a respectable job," as he lets his cards land facedown without so much as touching them. Instead, he leans back and stuffs a hand in his pocket with only the scarcest wince to show for the effort. He fishes around. Produces a box of matches. Chemicals ignite in a brush of friction as he swipes the reddened top of one across the edge of the table, a tongue of flame crafting itself out of the hungrily gobbled oxygen surrounding it. He reaches...

... and brings that match up to the cigarette waiting in -his- hands light it up with the orange glow of embers before snuffing it out entirely and pocketing those matches anew.

"Well -- go easy on me, huh? I feel like I've just stepped into something way over my head." Jude's laugh is modest, the way he pushes his free hand through his dark red hair equally so. He smiles helplessly as he looks at Cass, head tilting slightly to his left as she speaks. "Huh, that's a good question," he muses. He, too, has not so much as glanced at his cards once -- almost like he's forgotten they're there.

"Me? I think I'm low, but aiming high."

He's also not looking as his hand casually tilts down in a simple gesture to accompany his words -- or how that casually brings his lit cigarette towards the end of Cass', like a subtle offer to light it off of his if she just crosses that extra few inches of space.

"The fall's not quite so nasty."

Ten gella hit the felt. And then another ten more.

"But maybe that's just the kinda thing some people like. Right?"

A friendly smile follows. Another jingle of gella.

"I'll call, and raise you another ten."

<Pose Tracker> Cassidy Cain has posed.

Crenshaw gives Jude a level stare. "Yeah, well. You're a glutton for punishment, alright, if you're inserting yourself in this table with the likes of-- " His words fade off when the redhaired man turns and engages his companion in conversation; light banter, at /his/ expense. "Oh, I get it. This is how it's going to be, eh?" He crosses his arms over his chest. "Two old souls picking on a kid. You ought to be ashamed of yourselves."

Golden flecks twinkle within the depths of those glade-green eyes, that ever-present spark of humor intensifying at the brief pause Jude gives Crenshaw before the blown kiss. "The eyes, ay?" Cassidy wonders at Jude, giving Crenshaw a critical up-and-down inspection from where she sits. "I s'pose. You'll havetae forgive me for not being much of a poet, luv. Wasnae the sort to wax with prose over good looks for all of my penchant at theatricality. At the end of the day, my needs are simple and were I more uncouth, I'd say his level of attractiveness would be directly proportional to the size of his-- "

"/Cassidy/!" The dealer's pale cheeks flush, eyes widening incredulously.

"-- confidence. And he's failing me /terribly/ on that end with how he blushes so /prettily/." Cassidy leans over the table, fingers pressing flat on her pile of cards. "And just /were/ you thinking about, lad? I think the rest of the class would like tae know."

Crenshaw groans, flashing a look towards Jude, the words 'Can you believe what I have to deal with?' practically embedded on his youthful face. "You," he tells the woman, swiping his cards off the felt and picking through the suites, dropping two in the middle and waits for the others to dispense with their cards before he deals out the others on the deck. "And your god damn mouth. God only knows just how you haven't gotten shot for it yet, when I definitely know you're capable of worse."

"My god damn mouth?" Cassidy tips her head back, plucks her unlit cigarette out of her lips and laughs, the sound free and unfettered even as Jude lights his own tabac stick somewhere next to her, the flash and flare of chemical embers briefly illuminating his features in sharp relief against the shadows and muted lamplight. There is not so much as a demure flutter of fingertips over her mouth to quell the sound. "Ach, Crennie. You poor bastard. I've nae even begun tae /defile/ myself this evening." She wiggles the rolled up paper and all of the nasty habits it represents in emphasis.

Jude asks for clemency, but he will receive none by how the younger man looks at him across the table. "Sorry, I was already being generous enough about the ten-gell bet as a gesture of good faith, but since you /seem/ to have thrown your lot in with Lippy McQuipperson here, it's /war/, my friend. To both of you. Both." He extends his index and middle fingers to point to his eyes, then to Jude, and repeats the gesture to Cass, who simply gives him a smile, and a lift of slender shoulders.

The woman's pale fingers move forward, pressing her pointer finger and her own middle fingers on her hand of cards. She slides three cards out of it across the felt, under Crenshaw's sharp, expectant gaze. He deals out three cards from the deck for her to replace the ones she has exchanged out, and turns to Jude to see what he does. The man's answer, however, does prompt Cassidy to glance over at him again, brows lifting.

"Well, I'm verra sorry tae hear that," she tells Jude, in a tone that's more conversational than genuinely sympathetic. "Though I cannae blame you for trying tae ease whatever fall's coming your way with your poor hand being in the state it's in. It speaks verra highly of your sense of self-preservation, unless you like the pain in which case I best end this game quickly so I can leave you alone with Crennie."

"Hey!"

Cassidy grins at Crenshaw from across the table. Her own cigarette in hand, she leans forward to seemingly take the offer of the lit end of Jude's cigarette, except that's not quite what happens. The close of those few inches has those deft, thieving fingers relieving him of the cigarette entirely, tsking softly at the redhaired man.

"Nasty habit, though, this," she tells him, shaking her head. "All the medical journals're saying it these days. Shortens your breath, shortens your life." She draws the stolen cigarette into her mouth, cheeks hollowing out at her inhale, smoke curling from the dewy seam. "But what do y'ken, your luck's looking up whilst in the company of my verra generous, softhearted self, tryin' to save it by taking the poison into myself, instead."

She is all mischief, still, though she does slip her unlit cigarette in the waiting anchor of Jude's fingers, and finally brings out her lighter.

"Though I s'pose you could always discard that gesture of goodwill and fall into it with me instead," she tells him, a flick of a thumb producing an offered flame. "I dinnae ken what Crennie would say tae that, though. I think he likes you, and far be it for me tae get in the middle of a budding romance."

"Harridan," the dealer grouses.

This time, it's Cassidy who blows him a kiss, lips pursing around her pilfered cigarette.

<Pose Tracker> Jude Moshe has posed.

A look is given, and exchanged on Jude's part with a helpless little roll of his shoulders. As if to say, 'I'm not sure what the problem is.' Or maybe, more accurately, given the lack of care in any single bit of his body language,

'You're on your own, kid.'

"Guess I'm just a hopeless romantic at heart," is the redhead's aside to Cassidy as he continues on with an amiable shrug, as if he hadn't seen any of those pleading stares or heard any of those pointed reprimands. If he ought to be ashamed, he's certainly not looking like he's feeling any. "See, here, there's some ways you just can't measure a man's," pause, "confidence. The poor kid here might be blushing so bright you might be wondering if he finally hit puberty right -now-, but who knows? When the chips're down and it really matters, I don't doubt Crennie would have a big growth spurt in,"

pause,

"confidence. Some guys just aren't the showy types."

This is about where Jude levels a fingergun and a wink in Crenshaw's direction.

A real 'don't worry buddy, I got your back' gesture.

Because he's thoughtful.

Toxic little plumes of smoke twine off the lit end of Jude's cigarrete as he holds it between forefinger and thumb. He takes a draw, orange puffing up brightly at the end as it burns just a little bit more away from the tip to fill his mouth with poison. He says nothing about the exchange, as if comfortably minding his own business.

Cassidy! the dealer had exclaimed in his bluster. A wry sort of smile tugs at the journalist's lips as he recalls it.

Something worth remembering.

No -- he only pipes up when Crenshaw directly addresses him, amber eyes blinking in confusion as he looks up. He points at himself, mouthing, 'Who? Me??' in utter bewilderment. "Hey-hey now, c'mon! That seems like an extreme response to me." He looks Cass' way, utterly confused.

"I thought we were complimenting him," he asides to her, in a tone that might as well be secretive if it weren't so easy for their third party to hear him. "Weren't we complimenting him?"

As he speaks, Jude moves a hand to his cards. He's not looking at them, even for a second, which might call into question just how much thought he puts into the actual action of selecting what to give up. And yet -- Jude's movements are very deliberate, plucking exactly one card from his five card pile -- the the second to last card on his left, drawn away and cast Crenshaw's way even in the midst of his friendly, conversational words.

"Huh? -- Oh. This?" He looks at one bandaged hand thoughtfully, head tilt to the side. "It's not that big a deal. Just something I got on the job. These things happen, right? Just a risk of the trade." He doesn't really seem to elucidate on what that trade is, exactly, shaking his head once. "Fortunately, God above provides for us in our time of need."

He looks skywards, mouths an 'amen.' Very faithfully.

He looks to Crenshaw. Looks to Cassidy. To Crenshaw. Furrows his brows in silent judgment.

"Sorry. You're on your own there, kid," he offers, his words so very, very apologetic. Sympathetic, even. A second passes.

"... what's your safeword, out of curiosit-- hey!"

Jude, utterly helpless and quite apparently taken completely by surprised, looks back the very second he sees Cassidy plucking his cigarette from his hands. He makes a good faith effort to try to snatch it back but, of course, Cassidy's fingers are much too nimble. His brows furrow. His lips tug into a frown. It doesn't quite match the glint in his eyes.

"... Guess that's true," he finally relents, leaning backwards in his seat as a new stick glides effortlessly into almost expectant fingers. His pilfered cigarette has a cooling sensation to it when the blonde takes her first try of it, a menthol tingle to run down the throat. "You know, I've read every one of those things? I guess I oughta be thanking my lucky stars I met someone as sweet-hearted as you. But..."

His cigarette waggles. Expectantly.

"... I wouldn't be me if I wasn't breaking someone's heart by squandering their selfless good will." Thoughtful eyes glance towards Cassidy before the tip of that cigarette dips into the proffered flame, lingering there until the glow of its embers are as bright as the color of his gaze.

"Sorry, Crennie," he asides to the young man, that tone overly familiar for someone who just met him, "but you might as well have found out upfront. We could've had a good thing going, but..." His shoulders roll, helplessly.

"... probably would've been a passionate little fling at best. That's on me. I'm just too caught up chasing the one that got away."

A pause.

"Don't let that get you down though, I'm sure you'll find the right guy to woo with that blush of yours one day."

<Pose Tracker> Cassidy Cain has posed.

There's a laugh, the blonde's spine meeting the back of her chair, creaky wood sagging at her weight, the sound of it drowned out by the din of the evening's surrounding revels. "Romantic, maybe," she allows, brow arching over a virid eye flecked with golden motes. "Hopeless? I highly doubt it."

The interaction between Crenshaw and Jude over the table has those eyes ticking between both men, humor wreathed in every nuance on features so delicate, they were downright incongrous with her rough traveler's ensemble, as if plucked from the upper crust of Filgaia's society and then crammed in the closet of the local adventurer's guild to play Drifter across the planet's dangerous wastes. She shifts in her seat, a leather-clad leg hooking over her knee, an arm draping loosely against her chair's back rest, boot heel dangling just a few inches from the ground, embellished by a lone, tarnished steel spur.

Crenshaw looks all the more embarrassed by what the redhaired man says and implies with his words, though he takes the banter in good stride, suggestive that he is accustomed to such interactions with the rougher types that his profession often sees. Born from a merchant family, he'd always been an awkward kid with a gift for numbers, in which he sought solace from in a lonely childhood until he discovered his talents in the game, through which he met most of his acquaintances - Cassidy, being one of the most infamous of these. Had this been a few years ago, Jude's comments would have sent him running for the hills, hiding his face in shame. But his circumstances have changed, though the quality of his visitors remain the same.

"We were," Cassidy confirms to Jude, nonplussed, her expression so innocent that every court in Filgaia would convict her on the spot. "Complimenting him, I mean."

"Oh, shut it," the dealer grumbles instead, scrubbing the side of his face with one gloved hand. "You Drifters think you're all /sooooo amusing/. Let's see who gets the last laugh here in a few minutes." He doles out two cards from the top of the deck, and with a flick of a deft wrist, returns Jude's cards underneath the pile in his hands. He refrains from drawing his own cards - he will do that once both of his 'customers' reveal their hands.

The redhaired man's explanation, or lack thereof, of his trade has Cassidy leaning forward again, to prop her chin on one hand and angled just so in his direction, half her mouth hidden by the heel of her palm and leaving her stolen cigarette poking out from the visible corner. "And what's the trade?" she wonders, just as unhesitating in asking questions as she is placing bets with cards that she doesn't even bother to take a look at. "Tailor? Baker?" Mischief, again. Her eyes practically light up with it, like some manner of jungle cat. "Masseur?"

She lifts a palm. "A legitimate guess, y'ken," she appends, her tone light and easy. "Asking about safewords and all. What /is/ it anyway, Crennie?"

"It's 'screw you, and alla your mommas'," Crenshaw replies without skipping a beat. "Time to show 'em. You can go first, you green-eyed monster."

She manages to lean away from the journalist at his gamely attempt to retrieve what she stole, laughter suppressed due to her mouth's present preoccupation evident in her expression. Though at the dealer's call for attention, Cassidy redirects her focus, straightening up from her forward lean, taking another deep drag of her cigarette and letting smoke, tar, and something else pour into her lungs. Menthe tingles at the back of her throat and the presence of it surprises her, a brief glance turned Jude's way, a hint of reassessment entering that expressive stare. She didn't know many who preferred them, the rougher sorts always stuck to stronger leaves and an aftertaste to match - the better to wake them up on long rides across sands, rocky terrain and thick forests.

Everyone derives some pleasure from smoking. She is not immune to it, herself, but it's unexpected, in her estimation, to come across someone who does out of the implication of pure enjoyment and seemingly nothing else.

"S'nae /too/ unbelievable," she replies, the words causing whisps of smoke to escape her at every syllable. "Dangerous places, dangerous times. You need all the help you can tae live longer, methinks. Not like that's my excuse to begin with. Reading is fun, if one can spare the time, fuels the imagination and all." There's nothing special about her own cigarette, save for the dab of pale, unflavored beeswax on the filter, left behind by her mouth's earlier grip on it, applied to prevent it from chapping on said long rides across sands, rocky terrains and thick forests...indicative of some degree of vanity, or effort levied to protect her skin.

Another appreciative laugh at the whipcrack-sharp riposte; she doesn't even play at offense, when he decides to inflict some imagined heartbreak by poisoning himself anyway in spite of her /clearly/ very best efforts to save his life. "Ach, and so the knife is thus twisted," she declares dramatically, a hand pressing lightly over her chest as he leans in to light up the cigarette she had exchanged for his own. "Poor me and my achingly generous gestures, squandered by a rake at the verra gates of Hell. Could you believe your eyes, Crennnie? Ten minutes in and he's breaking /both/ our hearts already."

"Cad," Crenshaw deadpans at Jude from the other end of the table. "Scoundrel. How could you live with yourself."

With the edge of a fingernail, Cassidy flips her cards over, the strategic way she does so at the corner of the underside of one causing the proverbial domino effect: Two of Clubs, Two of Diamonds, Queen of Hearts, Jack of Spades, Ace of Clubs.

"It could have been better, I s'pose," she muses. "S'all on you now, Mister....?" She prompts for a name, angling a glance at Jude at the corner of her eye, the edge of her mouth twisting upwards to provide her smile with a slight slant.

"And then maybe afterwards, you can tell me just why you followed me here. A fair trade, wouldnae you say?" Lips part over a row of white teeth. "After breaking my wee heart so callously, so quickly."

Crenshaw freezes at Cassidy's words. His dark eyes slip from between the blonde to the man who had joined them. Silence fills the air.

"Er...should I...step...out...?"

Another pause. He /groans/.

"Cass. I swear if this ends with me getting /shot in the ass/ again, you and I are gonna have to renegotiate the terms of our social contract. Maybe put 'Don't Get Crenshaw Worth Shot' at the top of the god damn list!"

<Pose Tracker> Jude Moshe has posed.

Jude Moshe, in contrast to Cassidy's vaguely delicate nature, seems far too laid back to ever belong to anything resembling the creme de la creme -- and yet his clothes all look custom-tailored and of fine quality despite the easy going air that he carries himself with. Refined and carefully selected for the latest styles like someone who's aping the drifter lifestyle to be fashionable -- or at least, spending far too much money on their clothes. He leans to his side, suppressing a wince into a subtle gesture likely lost within the confused blink he offers Crenshaw, head cant to the right.

"Damn," he utters, lips pursed in abject bamboozlement. "Try to stick up for someone and look where it gets you. I guess kids have to be kids while they still can." Grousing good naturedly, the man pushes a hand through that mess of dark red hair, errantly pushing bangs away from his eyes in a gesture that proves ultimately futile before his hand flops bonelessly against his small collection of cards. "But still, ow. My confidence."

If he's smiling at that, it's completely unintentional. Truly.

'And what's the trade? Tailor? Baker? Masseur?'

"Huh? Well, let's see... in no particular order: 'briefly. Not professionally. That sounds like way too much effort.'"

Jude answers the blonde's questions without so much as missing a beat or looking up from where he errantly taps a single index finger upon the surface of his middle card in a steady, easy rhythm, addressing each in turn as if they were legitimate, and yet with a lack of care and absolute vaguery in his answers right down to the order. The casual tone is only slightly off-set by the ease of the smile that makes its way across his lips, shoulders lifting in an easy shrug as he finally delivers an answer.

"Man of the cloth," he says, so confidently and casually it might as well be true. "Traveling priest. May the true God above save us all from our wicked ways. Amen." He just barely manages to avoid an 'or something.'

A second passes after Crenshaw speaks. Jude Moshe's brows screw inward.

"... that's more like 'safewords,' isn't it? I don't think that's really practical in an intimate and passionate setting, it's why they like to keep 'em simple-- "

Time to show 'em. And Jude, graciously, silences, leaning back in his seat as he rests that stick of tobacco between his lips and lets the smoke draw in to his lungs, tingle in a pleasantly unpleasant way at his capillaries. If he notices the glance Cass casts his way, he doesn't call attention to it; he seems much more interested in the state of her cards at the moment, it seems.

"Amen to that," Jude murmurs off-handedly, as if wholly committed to his new occupation as a priest. Smoke spills from his lips like a waterfall before the vapors carry upward and dissipate into nothing more than a strong scent to remind of their lingering presence. "For me, it's just mostly part of the job." He pauses here, and asides, "... as a traveling priest. It's a different world even between nations on Ignas, let alone an entirely different landmass. You need to know how people see the world to really talk to them at their level. Books and journals help. In my experience."

Which is, of course, considerable. As a traveling priest.

The cards are flipped, her hand revealed. A pair. Jude whistles, head cant to the right. "Not that well, if I can't manage to beat a hand like that," he asides to Crenshaw finally, apparently more troubled over the prospect of losing against a pair than of breaking both of their tragically fragile hearts. Truly, a scoundrel.

'S'all on you now, Mister....?' prompts Cassidy.

"Looks like it is, Miss," is Jude's response, with only the hint of a smile for his lack of an actual answer. He might just have more to say, except then those words come. He blinks. His brows lift.

"Huh. Crenshaw got shot in the ass because of you?"

He doesn't miss a beat.

One hand holding his cigarette as it slowly burns away into so much ash, Jude leans back in his seat, head tilting, free hand slipping beneath his cards. "Don't worry, kid," he assures their dealer comfortably. "I'm not gonna shoot you in the ass. I can't speak for her, of course." Still. Her request.

"I guess it's only fair," he decides, cigarette lifted to his lips to take a draw from it, slow and easy. And he answers, before his cards are flipped, without so much as an ounce of hesitation:

"I followed you all the way here because I fell in love with you." An answer as honest as her broken heart.

"Love at first sight. Hit me so hard and so suddenly I gave up the holy path just to follow you here into this den of sin and confess!" He presses his cigarette-holding hand over his chest like some grandiose gesture, the heave of his lovelorn sigh filling the air with smoke. A second passes.

His shoulders slump.

"... well, that'd be a sweet thought, anyway, wouldn't it? Makes for a nice end, and matches up with your broken heart perfectly and everything, I'd say," he wonders, his thumb hooking under his cards. "I think all the best answers in life are worth earning, though. So how about this: if your hand beats mine, I'll give you your answer. If I beat yours, you tell me what you were doing in the deacon's office."

His fingers tap on his cards. Ready to flip. His smile is just as prepared.

"What do you say?"

<Pose Tracker> Cassidy Cain has posed.

Crenshaw looks back and forth between Cassidy and Jude - words exchanged as fast as lightning, it's plain to see where the younger cardsharp stands in all of this: he has no bloody idea what the hell is happening, now.

Whether the blonde believes that Jude truly is a man of the cloth, she doesn't show it, but she does give a very fine impression of one who believes every word that comes out of his mouth. Her cheek remains on an incline against a cupping hand, eyes lidded and glade-green irises glinting from underneath lowered lashes. Sharp, yes, indicative enough that the woman is no fool, but whatever level of perception she may have is nigh-near obliterated by the immense amusement she's reaping from tongiht's festivities. There's an attentive nod, serious enough save for that expression in her eyes, seemingly accepting of everything else that Jude tells her: that he had toyed with being a tailor, that he was once a baker and being a masseur takes too much effort. The idea that he's a /priest/, of all things, only intensifies that simmering mirth.

The question regarding the state of the dealer's rear end does earn him something else - a light shrug, a lift of her shoulders. "Well," she replies. "I wouldnae say that was my fault entirely."

"Of course you would say that," Crenshaw mutters.

Though Jude's reassurance only causes the poker champion to eyeball him skeptically. "You know what kind of people say that?" he wonders rhetorically. "Someone who's about to shoot my ass." And in a blatant demonstration of one who more believes his own words that the other man's opinion, he tilts his body away from Jude, to keep said posterior away from range. "Cass, come on, what the hell? What did you bring to my doorstep now-- ?"

'I followed you all the way here because I fell in love with you.'

"...uh," the young dealer remarks eloquently, clearly unsure whether Jude is being serious or not.

If Cassidy hears her poor acquaintance, however, she doesn't show it. For all of her clear attempts at humoring the redhaired man's remarks, it's the last that draws a more overt reaction out of her. Leaning back against her chair, fingers splay against the flat of her stomach; her head tilts and she /laughs/. She can no more help this than the urge to breathe, fire and pain braiding through her sides, twin bottle-rockets set alight. Tears unshed spring in the corners of her eyes once more and her hand raises up higher to scrub the side of her face. Pale cheeks flush with it, and while she makes it a point to laugh freely and often, this is the first time in days in which she's laughed so much so readily.

But it isn't the lie that generates it - at least, not completely. Nor is it wholly caused by the dramatic way Jude heaves that lovelorn sigh. The laugh itself finds a cause somewhere between what Jude does and what she knows, or is about to tell him, the perfect storm of something that could prove devastating in ways that have the potential to be supremely entertaining, absolutely tragic, both or somewhere in between.

"A man who dinnae take too kindly tae debts," she breathes around the lilting gale. "What would you say if I said that I was going tae tell you anyway if you asked? Ach, luv, you know what they say about questions that you wouldnae like the answers tae, especially if you're a /priest/. I'm afraid that if you heard it, you'd feel obligated tae save my wee immortal soul, battered and tarnished as it is. That's what you men of the cloth do, dinnae you?" Eyes brim with humor. "Save?"

Her hand falls back on the table, fingernails drumming on the felt.

"Either way, even if all of that were true, I doubt that what I'm about tae tell you would make you love me more. In fact, I verra much think it'd be the opposite. So you can thank your fortunes today, luv. I'm capable of breaking my wee heart for the both of us. But since you appear tae be a sporting lad, I'll take your wager, and I'll even double down by promising the earth below and skies above that I'll be truthful."

Whoever she is, either she's too distressingly accustomed to dangerously high stakes, or she's way too curious to see how her own fortunes play out, which brings its own set of troubles on its own. Either way the conversation between the two does not alleviate Crenshaw's apprehensions any and there's a quick look of concern at Cassidy there - it speaks of history, but ever since the cards have been laid out by Jude, the green-eyed woman hasn't spared much of a glance at him...and he knows what that means.

'Damn it, Cass,' he thinks. In his mind, he recalls the bag he had stowed under the floorboards, prepared for eventualities such as this. And while his pride chafes at the idea of leaving town the first chance he's able, without rendering the blonde /some/ assistance, he remembers what happened to Thessius and Theresa, and Cassidy would brook no arguments there.

Whatever is coming, she is intent to face it alone.

"Well," Crenshaw sighs. "I guess it's your turn, lover boy."

<Pose Tracker> Jude Moshe has posed.

For the present time, Crenshaw is forgotten.

Which, of course, leaves the potential predicament of his poor posterior an ominously open question.

No -- for right now, Jude's focus is entirely on Cassidy, even for all that he never quite seems like he's giving her the full measure of his attention. Always seeming to look somewhere else, address someone else, have his thoughts on something else -- but she's never quite out of the peripherals of his vision. Not once.

It's all in the subtleties of his gestures, undercurrents better guessed at than known. His expression never wavers once as he regales them both with his lovelorn explanation; if it's the truth, it's one he seems to be completely at ease with, and if it's a lie, it's a lie that spills from his lips as easily as the truth, or that smoke that congeals in the air above them.

And her answer is to laugh at his confession.

His brows lift. Surprise overtakes his gaze at the blonde's fiery laughter that squeezes tears to the corners of her eyes. His cigarette dangles out of the corner of his lip; he looks the spitting image of a man who's just been scorned for speaking the truth of his feelings. One might expect him to simply shatter at any moment now.

Instead, it's a hopeless grin that paints his lips and a helpless shrug that rolls off his shoulders, as easy as they could ever come.

"Ouch," he declares, like someone who's just been dealt a bleeding wound to their pride. "Oh well. Can't blame a guy for trying, right?"

Oh, but that isn't the end of it. Certainly not. His fingers twitching underneath his cards, Jude watches Cassidy as she promises nothing but trouble through words and deeds. What would he say, if she was going to tell him anyway? "I'd say I wasted a good setup," is his first response, rubbing the back of his neck with a hapless smile. "I guess this is the part where I gracefully bow out for my own sake, huh?" This wise deduction is made as he brings that cigarette back to his lips. He lingers, holding it there, before he ultimately decides, "... that's probably the smart play. Buuuuut, I've never been too good at those."

'That's what you men of the cloth do, dinnae you? Save?'

"Yep. So they keep telling me, anyway."

And here, Jude pointedly takes a draw of that life-damning cigarette as if weighing his own opinion on the subject.

"At this point I feel like any good man of the cloth'd be obligated to try to save you even without hearing your damning confessions, though. So... might as well dive in headfirst, yeah? I'm already in enough trouble as-is. What's a little more?"

'A little.'

Words to regret.

But, she doubles down. Raises the stakes. Jude takes it all in good, wry stride. Promise the earth below and skies above she'll be truthful, huh?

"Sure. I'll call that."

He keeps that answer phenomenally vague even as much as it is simply straightforward as Crenshaw regards him, makes his remark, and they both wait on him. Jude tilts his head; his shoulders roll in a sort of 'sure, why not?' kind of shrug. His cards flip in one, smooth motion.

Two pair. It'd almost be perfect, if not for one little thing:

King of Diamonds, Jack of Hearts. Ace of Spades. A Two of Hearts... and a Two of Clubs.

The spitting image of the Two of Clubs in Cass' hand.

"Huh," Jude utters, head cocked slowly to his right, brows furrowed. "Imagine that."

He, at least, sounds quite convincingly confused.

<Pose Tracker> Cassidy Cain has posed.

Jude's subtleties aren't all too lost on her; to be one so practiced in the art of the confidence game means to be a deft hand at being able to read people, and being /unable/ to read them accurately speaks of an operator in like circles. But at the very least, Cassidy's laughter is honest, for all of the wounded look that the redhaired man gives her along with that hopeless grin and helplesss shrug. "It's alright," she says with a wave of her hand. "If nothing else, I've heard that tenacity is a virtue. Maybe in the end all you have tae do is keep trying, luv. What you say about answers and the earning of them can also apply tae the things in this world worth keeping. Pain makes any effort worth it, methinks." Something else passes through that humorous stare. "But what do I know? I'm nae one tae play it safe and the world being the way it is, that's a foolish mindset tae have, dinnae you think?"

At least his following words /are/ honest, for all of his easy banter. If nothing else, the bandages in his hand lends credibility to the statement that he's in already enough trouble, though it doesn't seem to keep him any from making more mistakes on that end - and those who know her would be the first to say that getting involved with her in any measure would be just that. "Maybe I oughtae be charitable, myself, and try to save you from yourself if you're going to insist on that," she tells him. "But my own philanthropy tends tae be just a wee bit selective."

As for the outcome of Jude's card-flip...

Well, it would be surprising, to anyone that wasn't sitting in this table. Especially to Crenshaw, who looks at Jude's hand, then Cassidy's, then smirking once. "Yeah, well, what did I tell you? Filthy cheaters, the lot of you. Except I don't know whether you did." He points to Jude emphatically. "Or she did. Or maybe both of you did, only way to make that certain is if I looked through the deck but /thankfully/, that's not necessary because..."

The dealer turns to his own hand and flips his cards without even looking at them: Three of Diamonds, Four of Diamonds, Five of Diamonds, Six of Diamonds, Seven of Diamonds. A straight flush, though it's an open question as to whether the man also cheated or he won legitimately - equal odds in that either way, and that is the genius of it. While low cards, the old saying finds a home yet again in their present circumstances: In Crenshaw Worth's table, the House always wins.

For all of his trouble, and the slings and arrows he had suffered at his own expense, the dealer finds himself forty gella richer, and he uses a wooden hook to sweep his winnings to his side of the table.

"Well played, Crennie," Cassidy allows, pushing back from the table, standing up and stretching her arms over her head, feeling the quiet pop-pop-pops of idle joints as they recalibrate back to some semblance of activity. She reaches for the hat hanging on the spoke of her chair and, without hesitation, takes the bottle of cheap whiskey-swill sitting on the green felt. "As usual, I dinnae regret losing tae you." Eyes glitter from under long lashes. "It's a wonder watching you work."

Crenshaw's slightly-smug face shifts into something more unreadable. "Cass..."

The blonde waves a slender hand dismissively, turning to Jude and wiggling the bottle at him.

"Let's take a walk, luv," she tells Jude, replacing the hat on her head and tilting it just so. "Try and settle this like two consenting adults. I'd argue my hand wins because Diamonds is the superior suit, but the value of your hand overall trumps mine. Then again, I'm nae sure that matters when I'm so willing tae indulge your curiosity anyway, if nae just tae see what happens." She inclines her head at him, a wayward golden tress falling to curl against her right cheek. "Maybe I'm in the mood tae have my soul saved today. Though I s'pose there's always a chance that you'll change your mind. Either way, I've nae any regrets...it was a good game, and my evening's already more interesting than initially anticipated."

With that, she pivots on her heel to start heading away from Crenshaw's table, boots taking steps into the heavy foot-traffic of Gentleman's Alley, punctuated by the tinny ring of tarnished spurs.

"The name's Cassidy Cain. And while it's been an age since my last performance..." She looks over her shoulder at him, a single gold-flecked eye visible from the shadows of her hat. "I s'pose I /could/ be your damsel in distress this evening."

<Pose Tracker> Jude Moshe has posed.

"I wouldn't know," is Jude Moshe's comfortable response to Cassidy Cain as he watches those dealt hands be exposed. "I'm more the kinda person to think that being able to save your skin is too rare a luxury in this world to pass up. But, hey."

The cards flip. Jude's brows furrow.

"If danger comes to you as easily as breathing, you're probably already ahead of the game, right?"

Never underestimate the ones who blend in to the background the easiest. Words to live by.

And words Jude Moshe reminds himself of when Crenshaw reveals his hand in a cascade of flipping cards. Straight flush.

"Well, wouldja look at that," the whistle that comes at the tail end of this observation is most perfectly placed, as is his winning smile. "Looks like the House gets his much-deserved vengeance! Way to go, kiddo." The redhead's hands lift palms-forward in a show of humble defeat towards the victor, his head bowed in deference for Crenshaw. For a man who just decisively lost, he doesn't look terribly surprised.

"I just knew those eyes were gonna break my heart, and look at that. Never trust a pretty face, kid."

The wink is probably only kind of meant to make poor Crenshaw awkward.

Probably.

But, just like that, Jude is all too happy to hop up off his feet. Stretching arms in front of him with gloved, interlacing fingers straining until joints give a a satisfying crack, the redheaded man heaves a sigh, playing oblivious to the unreadable warning that Crenshaw offers Cassidy, like it simply wasn't his place or, perhaps more appropriately, concern. No -- those amber eyes of his are more specifically focused on that cheap whiskey being dangled at him as if it were the more tempting than manna from a desert oasis.

"Hey, if you're providing the drinks, I'll follow you like a lovestruck puppy," declares Jude as if this were the most natural thing in the world to say to someone talking about potentially dangerous things. His left hand stuffing into the pocket of his pants, he fishes about as he snuffs out the stubby remains of his borrowed cigarette, the last of its stolen smoke dwindling into a smothering pile of ash. "I'll even be a gentleman and not talk about the fact that my hand woulda beat yours out in any other circumstance." He's so generous. So generous, in fact, that he finally produces a small handful of silvery gella, slapping it on the felt green countertop in front of Crenshaw.

"For being a good sport. Compliments of the Church."

It's true enough.

"You seem like a soul in need right now, anyway."

And with that, Jude moves forward, with every intention of casually swiping that bottle from Cassidy as he makes his way towards the Alley proper, his footfalls a silent complement to the metallic jingle of Cass' own as they go on their peacefully, pleasantly dangerous little stroll.

Cassidy Cain, she says.

"Is that right? Phew. What a relief -- I was sure -I- was gonna end up having to be the damsel this time around," he answers in that affable way of his. For all the world he seems intent to snub her of a name once more...

"Call me Jude Moshe. Just another consenting adult who loves uneventful, soul-saving walks."

... but he figures a name's probably the least he'll owe her, when all's said and done.

<Pose Tracker> Cassidy Cain has posed.

Was she always ahead of the game? Cassidy only gives Jude a blithe little smile at that, noncommittal there in spite of her more straightforward words that came before.

Crenshaw huffs at Jude's flirtations, though it doesn't stop him from pocketing the tip. He only seems half-relieved, however, that they are leaving. His dark eyes remain on Cassidy as she moves, taking the redhaired stranger with her. He knows what she means and while it has been a few years since he had last seen her, some methods remain constant and he reluctantly stows his winnings away, slipping a hand on his waistcoat while the other fingers the pistol fastened just underneath the table, closest to his side. At the bite of cold metal against his digits, his confidence falters, remembering the last time he got /shot/. In the /ass/.

With a quiet breath, he palms it and closes up his stall. Pity, this, he was enjoying Adlehyde but it was time he went back to Nortune anyway.

"S'nae mine," Cassidy says of the bottle. "It's simply appropriated for a different purpose entirely, and it's nae as if Crennie cannae afford a new bottle now with what he's just won from us." The whiskey dangles easily in her hand, though when Jude moves to swipe it from her, he'd find very little resistance in the end. Unlike his cigarette, she doesn't play keep away with it; he'd easily be able to take it from her. His generosity about the cards, however, remains unaddressed and again, under dim ambient light, he'd find that delicate profile twist in a faint, cryptic smile. She does not deny his assertion, though it's a strange reaction for someone who gives the impression that she always plays to win.

Curious.

"Well, if you'd want tae be the damsel instead, I can switch roles nae problem," she tells him, canting a wry look his way. "Nae anybody can accuse me of being inflexible. You're ill-dressed for the part, however. We'd need tae get you a corset, and stuff it with a coupla canteloupes. Or watermelons, if we want to push the bounds of realism. At the end of the day, I'm an artist, y'ken. Far be it for me tae deny anybody creative license."

She weaves through the crowd effortlessly, the choking bottleneck of these loud, narrow avenues hardly an obstacle for one so practiced in slipping through spaces and bodies. Her pilfered cigarette burns down close to the nub, but she hardly seems to notice when she finally finds a quiet corner close to the local apothecary, creaky, wooden steps winding up to the flat roof that holds wrought-metal frames in which several potted plants hang - not quite a garden, not quite a greenhouse, but it suits her purposes just fine; out of the way enough to have a conversation, while enabling her to see the whole of the street and the festivities below.

And there is plenty to look at; gamblers pitting their talents against dealers, games of skill standing along with diversions decided by pure chance. Smoke from countless cigarettes mingle with the exhaust spent from stalls catering street food to the masses. Urchins beg for spare coin while their betters pick pockets, and their downright superiors /convincing/ those who would listen to give up their gella anyway - a more promising breed of thief, of which she counts herself among that number, on a very good day.

She does not seem to care that she is tresspassing, simply hurdling over the fence set up to keep people from accessing those steps, wandering upward towards the roof. She doesn't seem to care that she's /seen/ doing this also, when, once she gets there, she leans against the boundary preventing bodies from meeting grievous injury by falling onto the ground below, arms draped over top by the elbows and a knee bent to tilt the curve of her right hip upward. The cigarette is gone from her lips and when she has gotten rid of it is a mystery, but he has already surmised that for a self-declared artist that her fingers are simply too fast for painting, or other such nonsense.

The introduction from the amber-eyed man /does/ surprise her, and he is rewarded by a look that reflects it, punctuated by a lift of graceful eyebrows. But there's pleasure there, too, from the way her eyes lid in a reprehensibly feminine fashion.

"Jude." She tests the name, her brogue slightly elongating the 'u'. "Alright, then."

She turns her face towards him, a half-smile curling up one corner of her mouth. "The deacon's acquainted with a man that needs killing. And while the world's a verra surprising place and I know for a fact that anything can happen within it, my wee little heart is hoping that I get tae be the one tae do it. What say you as a man of the cloth, luv? Does murder necessitate saving? Or am I damned tae Hell immediately? Nae gonna lie, I always wondered what it'd look like. Seems tae me that all the fun ones end up down there eventually."

She turns around at that, to face him fully, hands slipping into her pockets, the small of her back wedging against the railing behind her. "Are you friendly with the deacon?" she wonders. "Because if that's the case, then our night's about to get verra interesting, indeed."

<Pose Tracker> Jude Moshe has posed.

Crenshaw's hand hits the cold metal of a pistol. He thinks better of it.

And the 'okay' sign that Jude Moshe flashes behind him before disappearing entirely from his world is so fleeting but too well-timed to be in response to anything else but that. And just like that... he's gone.

...

The face the redhaired would-be man of the cloth makes as he imbibes in less-than-holy drink is slightly less than flattering.

"Ugh," grimaces the holy man with the less than holy expression as he shakes that bottle skeptically. "I'm thinking about taking back the gratitude anyway. I wouldn't even want to put this on a wound. He better use my money to get something nicer than -this-." Despite his dry grousing, though, he still seems to take it as easily as anything else he has. It also doesn't stop him from taking another swig, making another face.

"I think you got swindled," he says, of the drink that she took for free. "I'm pretty sure this is mostly water."

And again, he drinks.

There's always another layer of conversation to any spoken words. More, if you want to be technical. The things that aren't said, the exact meaning of a word in a given context. The things people do or do not do. The flash of a smile that's more an enigma. Language, a many-splendored thing, most of its subtleties unnoticed. It hardly seems any different from Jude, who scarcely reacts to Cassidy's smile with anything less than that ever-friendly one of his own, hands locking lackadaisically at the back of his head, using the glass surface of that whiskey bottle like an impromptu headrest.

But his ambivalence, too, is a message all its own.

"Nah, I'm not gonna take that great honor away from you," he is quick to quip, lifting a brow as he walks beside her. Always easy, always prepared. The shudder at her long list of preparations is, of course, masterfully understated. "At the end of the day, I don't think I'm that much of a masochist." A second passes. "Kinda flattered you have such a generous opinion of my feminine proportions, though."

Pearly whites are flashed in the wake of a grin, his laugh more an easy chuckle as he makes his way through the crowds at a pace much less graceful than hers. No -- there's a lot of "sorry"s and "'scuse me"s and "comin' through!"s interspersed throughout his awkward wedging past the crowds and occasional shoving, like a nice contrast to the way Cassidy all but slips through the cracks.

At the end of it, he finds himself at the creaking metal of the apothecary's fence, rubbing the back of his head as a red brow lofts pointedly at it. "Huh. Looks like it's closed," he remarks, distantly dismal. "Ah well. I'm sure there's another spot that--"

And up Cassidy flips, vaulting the fence with casual ease as others stare at her blatant trespassing.

"-- we can completely ignore to break some laws for no reason. Sure. Okay. Why not?"

Hands and shoulders lift helplessly. He flashes a couple of staring, concerned passerbies a most promising of smiles.

"It's fine, I'm with the Adlehyde guard -- I'll go after her," he takes the time to lie his way through their worries as effortlessly as he hops the fence, landing and waving that whiskey bottle through the air as he pursues the willfully law-blind blonde lass. "Don't you worry, I'll be sure to give her a proper spanking in the name of the king, or whatever."

This is probably not reassuring, but at least he says it with unphased confidence.

And so it is with the rueful shake of his head and a muttered "already enough of a pain in the ass" to himself that Jude rounds on Cassidy up above. He says nothing as he settles beside her, leaning his back into the guardrail with a nonchalant sense of ease, even as the metal groans just slightly under his body weight. "That's kinda insulting," he finally remarks as he hears that rusty protest, heaving a sorry sigh.

"Promised the locals I'd haul your ass to jail, by the way. Just so you know."

Because he cares.

Adlehyde has always been a bustling city. Relative to Ignas' desertified destitution, anyway. But it's particularly so these days as people pour in from across the continent and even in some rare cases beyond for the upcoming cultural exhibition, leading to a far rowdier and sometimes unpleasant nightlife.

Jude's attentions, however, seem far beyond those errant activities that bustle beneath him; his amber gaze is tilted skyward, watching the blots of clouds whispering past the star studded sky as Cassidy speaks. "Sounds personal," is his first assessment; if either of them is expecting horror and outrage for Cass' violent declarations and hopes, disappointing ambivalence is all that ends up given. Jude raises the lip of that bottle to his mouth, and then pauses.

"I'd say you're probably asking the wrong holy man," is his follow up. "But I've always seen God as the kind of entity who'd give you exactly what you don't want, exactly when you don't want it, regardless of how good or not you are. You know. A dick." He pushes off the railing then, stepping away from it exactly one foot before pivoting towards her on his heel.

"So, for you? You've probably got an express ticket to the pearly gates. Or whatever it is you believe in."

His answer to her salvation comes in the form of a bottle of cheap whiskey shoved into her personal space like a pleasantly generous offer to share, regardless of the fact that he took it from her to begin with. He fishes out his cigarettes with his free hand as he offers it up, looking over the building with quiet, detached interest as he speaks. "'Friendly' is a bit strong a word. I've got a mutually beneficial arrangement with some of the people who work there. I get what I want, I stay out of their hair, everyone goes home happy without having to deal with potential headaches. Perfect." He stares down at his pack of cigarettes thoughtfully, brows scrunched inward.

"If you want my professional opinion, though... I think anyone can be saved. Even you. Just depends on what kinda salvation you actually need, though. Doesn't it?" Amber eyes slide back to her, watching for a silent moment before they flicker away once more.

"So. What kinda guy are we talking about here? Scum of the earth? Old flame? Corrupt priest? Annoying journalist? Charming redhead? A guy asking too many questions? Stop me if I guess it right."

<Pose Tracker> Cassidy Cain has posed.

Both of them, naturally, get a 'my word' from the passing locals when the blonde hurdles the fence, and the 'traveling priest' chases after her.

'That's kinda insulting' he says, when he finally joins her on the roof; he gets a laugh for his trouble, query emphasized by the tilt of her head, a look so innocently inquisitive that she'd be convicted by any court in Ignas on the spot. "Ay?" Cassidy muses. "Dinnae think I gave the impression I was polite." Which, really, was true enough. She certainly doesn't seem to have any qualms stealing his cigarettes, after all, when he made that mistake of offering her a light.

But the remark about tossing her in jail has her laughing again; she even lifts her hands gamely, wrists crossed together. "A priest /and/ a guard," she observes, her head angling upwards to bear enough moonlight on her face to banish the shadows from it momentarily. "On top of being a once tailor, a once baker and never-once a masseur. You're a talented man, luv. Methinks I misjudged you, and here I thought you were solely in the business of saving souls that you wouldnae have the time to see tae mischief makers behind bars. Well, then, I think you better take me in. Far be it for me tae deny you your catch today."

Once she does give her supposedly truthful answer, that is what ends up happening - disappointment, if not just the fact that she does expect any or all of those things: a gasp of outrage, or the immediate attempt to save her soul by citing religion, or the opportunistic seizure of a bounty. There were hopes of something more spirited, like the exchange of gunfire, or a chase across town.

'Sounds personal,' Jude says instead.

There's a chuff of breath that would have been a laugh if she still wasn't wiggling the pantomime of bound wrists at him, eyes glinting and positively radiating with the urge to see if he'd actually shackle her and haul her off to the big house. "Ay," she replies. "Verra personal. So personal, in fact, that I'm relatively certain that the pearly gates are nae in my future." But for all the talk of such a grievous offense, whatever that may be, she speaks of it casually, and even with some semblance of good humor - enough to imply that the grievance may not be as severe as she is suggesting.

But those eyes say differently. The smile remains but the intent is there, giving veracity to every word.

He doesn't cuff her either, but what he does is extend the bottle of swill that he intends to keep on drinking despite his distaste for it. Beggars can't be choosers, she supposes, and the gesture is more telling than anyone else expects. Wrists unlocked, a hand accepts the bottle, taking a swig from the lip and lets it burn down her throat. There's no wrinkle of her nose - the mark of an uncomplaining palate, and a ridiculously strong stomach to match. But that, too, is not surprising to anyone who gets to know her: Cassidy Cain can withstand a tremendous amount of punishment, with her signature brand of sass to boot, and despite herself, she just can't seem to die.

"The wrong holy man because you're nae the right rank, or the wrong holy man because you're nae holy in the slightest?" she quips. "But I can understand mutually beneficial arrangements. It's big of you, though. Personally I dinnae bother keeping myself from becoming a headache for the unsuspecting. Are you feeling it yet, luv? The pulsing at the back of your head, the tick at the side of your jaw? Good thing you gave the bottle back tae me, you dinnae need more of that."

She takes another swallow, tilts it further into her mouth. She drains half the bottle.

"Well," she replies. "You're the priest, remember? If there are different types of salvation out there and if there's one for me, I was hoping tae get an expert's opinion." Eyes twinkle at that. "Unless you're actually nae a priest, in which case, silly me for oh-so-naively going along with your charade."

When the man asks for more details, she grins at him; a smile that cuts like a knife, brilliant and edged in the dark, lending a reckless look to features almost too refined for it to be a distressingly good fit, but somehow does. "Jeremiah Black," she says. " 'Jet' to his associates and countless victims. I call him Jerry, because he hates it. Daddy issues, you see. His da was a Jerry, and it makes him a II." Perhaps another name for another captain of another band of marauding outlaws that scour the wastes of Filgaia. But unlike the Black Ties, whose members only kill when necessary, the Mercy Killers maintain no such pretense for civility - dangerous desert vikings who take, pillage, murder and rape with impunity, led by a man who is notoriously difficult to track, and some say even harder to kill.

But the connection with the deacon? She isn't forthcoming on that front, not yet.

"So scum of the earth, ay. Old flame?" A hand lifts, wobbling this way and that - it was partly true, and partly wasn't. As often with her personal relationships, it tended to be complicated. "Cannae account for taste, I s'pose, but I was younger and mistakes were made. Mistakes that I intend tae rectify as efficiently as possible. But if you're worried about the deacon, you nae need tae. Sommat tells me he dinnae know who he's dealing with. Jerry's a wily bastard. But then again..." She regards him quietly for a beat, a brow lifting upwards. "I seem tae draw the very kind."

A wry smile tugs on her lips. "You oughtae tell your friends back in church tae be a wee bit more careful with who they deal with. Jerry tries his verra best not tae leave loose ends." And she knows this rather well.

<Pose Tracker> Jude Moshe has posed.

"Well, what's a priest but someone who guards the sanctity of your soul?"

Jude doesn't even blink, uttering those words as if they were just as natural a fact as the planet must rotate around the sun. "When you think about it like that, they really just go hand in hand. Some people's souls just need that extra layer of stone and iron bars for protection. Or maybe the rest of the people's souls need that extra protection from them." He gives her a look, amber eyes scrutinizing in a way that seems to briefly pierce past merriment and mischief before his grin asserts itself in an oh-so-charming fashion that perfectly complements his next words.

"Probably the latter, in your case."

So is the venerated holy guard's opinion levied. With a wink, and a cluck of the tongue.

Those wrists are presented, wiggling about temptingly as if just daring to be swiped away in cold iron. Daring to break out of the cold iron so they can go on a merry chase. Daring to end it all with a bullet or six.

Jude Moshe's response is to yawn in the face of it all, as if blowing away all Cassidy Cain's hopes and dreams within the breadth of a lazy exhale.

Very personal, she says, with a voice laced in the irony of excessive glibness. Moshe takes it all in stride, without a word said as to whether he believes her or not -- as if letting the silence say what he doesn't. Letting the calm of his stare speak a conversation with hers that their voices aren't quite privy to.

He doesn't say anything, though. Just passes off that bottle. And once she's gripped it, and his hand is free --

-- he aims to give her a smack on her free wrist.

Just what she deserves.

"I think you're the one person they'd lock outta hell for wanting it too bad," he finally says as he pulls free his pack of cigarettes, shaking free a lone stick to pluck out. He speaks easily, his tone almost sympathetic in a way almost patently designed to make light. He rolls the menthe-tinged cigarette in his hand considerately. "You gotta play it a bit more cool. Even a disciplined holy man would find it embarrassing."

He'd tsk, but at this point he's too busy indulging in his vices. Letting his cigarette rest between his lips, he finds one of his matches and strikes it off the guard rail before bringing it to his lips. The dimly lit around them becomes briefly dyed with offset, pale oranges as he lights that stick of tobacco and menthol, feeling it cool its way down his throat as he sucks in. "What can I say? I've got a real heart of gold once you get to know me. It's why I haven't hauled you off to jail quite yet. I'm a nice guy like that." The smoke billows from his lips in smaller and smaller puffs with every uttered syllable, the subtext of, 'plus, you're already more than enough of a pain without having to try to deal with -that-' going perfectly, politely unspoken. Like a gentleman would. Instead, he just shakes his head, looking back to the stars.

"Trust me, you're gonna hafta do more than all this to give me a headache, Cassie. Us men of the cloth are built resilient," he asides, the words like a subtle challenge.

"... That's not a challenge, by the way. Just so we're clear."

And that a much less subtle challenge.

It comes as light and airy as the shrug that follows in its aftermath, as the brows that lift at his forehead at her eye-twinkling accusations. He coughs, innocently, looking aside as he buries that cigarette in his lips like a brief salvation from speaking. A moment passes.

"Well," he says, with the telltale exhale of smoke. "I once wore a priest's vestments, and I like to travel a lot. I don't really know of any other qualifications you'd need, so that oughta count, right?"

Close enough.

Jeremiah Black. 'Jet'. Jerry. "Junior, huh?" Jude asides, as his own contribution to the man's prodigious selection of names. "Ha. Daddy issues. Those're just like those mouth sores. Everyone's got 'em, they just like to pretend they don't." Hands lift into the air uncaringly. But the red-haired man continues to listen, without making much indication of just whether or not he's heard about this Jet Black or not. But there are signs here and there, regardless. The thoughtful furrow of his brows, the side glance of amber eyes Cassidy's way.

It's the same sort of deliberateness that lets him look so convincingly innocent as she nods her head at him, almost taken aback. "Oof. Guess you got me there, huh?" Ever the good sport.

"I'll let 'em know. Doesn't do me much good if they're dead." And thoughtful, to boot. He heaves a sigh as if lamenting the effort all this is going to take, moving to flop against the railing beside Cassidy, elbows propping himself against the metal surface. "I guess I owe you for that." A second passes, thoughtful, considerate.

"So. Found him?" he asks, curiously. And then, with no regard for how personal or loaded a question it may be, he proceeds undaunted, "How're you gonna do it? Kill him, I mean? If you find him. Gun? Knife? Run him over with a carriage?" Cigarette leaving a trail of smoke against his right hand, he looks her way. "Got an elaborate scheme? Or just gonna wing it if you find him?" If. It seems an important qualifier.

<Pose Tracker> Cassidy Cain has posed.

The piercing stare gets a faint half-smile and a slow, subtle lift of slender shoulders. "Perhaps the latter," Cassidy echoes. "But I hate tae be predictable that way. I like tae believe that if nothing else, I've my own entertainment factor tae recommend me. And it seems tae be holding, otherwise you wouldnae follow me all the way from the parish."

A smack on the wrist, and talk about wanting to go to Hell too badly just to see what it's like, earn him a broader grin. There's no yelp, but she does turn the tender inside of it over to inspect the leavings of the blow, the faint sting leaving a pink flush that rises to the surface and adding depth to the multiple threads of life-giving veins pulsing underneath a surprisingly well-tended pallour; a woman who takes almost obsessive care with her skin. "Are you sure you're a priest? With a smack so well-practiced, I'd almost peg you tae be a nun, though any habits on that end wouldnae do your hair color justice," she tells him easily, lowering her free hand. "But you gottae wonder then, ay? Whether I'm so eager tae see it or whether it's all part of an elaborate ploy. I dinnae think I actually /want/ tae end up in Hell, if the word is true, suffering in fire and sulfur for all eternity, peeled and ripped apart slowly only tae be put back together again and start the entire process over. That sounds nae fun for me, and I'd have tae wonder about the sorts who /would/ find it so. So if my eagerness keeps me out of it, then I s'pose I'm set. That'd be something, methinks, if I can fool the Devil himself tae spare me."

Assertions regarding his resilience, and the words before, have her laughing again, subjecting him with the full brunt of that bubbling mirth. A hand doffs off her hat again, hooking it on one of the wrought-iron appendages nearby. "Cassie, ay? Terms of endearment already? With that and following me all the way here, I'm starting tae think whether there isnae something tae what you said about it being love at first sight. You oughtae be more careful, luv, if you actually found a good one, she's liable tae expect something immediately, but thankfully for you, I'm nae one of those. Whatever happened tae aiming high?"

She presses a palm flat on the top of the rail, leaning her full weight against it. The groaning creak of rusty metal grates at her ears, but she doesn't seem to notice it nor the dangerous angle it starts to adopt. "I dinnae think you actually know what you're implying," she says regarding his challenge, turning sideways to fully face his profile, a cocked hip leaning against the creaking rails. "If you expect me tae do anything and everything tae subject you tae a headache, wouldnae that mean that you'd have tae be around me constantly? Riding horses, crossing the wastes, playing anchor, bystander and participant to whatever I get my head intae. I dinnae think you have the abject /lack of sanity/ that requires, though you definitely have the sense of humor."

Her free hand and the bottle it carries rests dramatically on her chest. "So I s'pose we finally reach an impasse," she tells him with so much solemnity that it's bound to be potently facetious. "You dinnae think I'm wild enough tae be a worthy test of your priestly resilience, and I dinnae think you're crazy enough tae stick around long enough for that tae happen. What tae do now, now? What tae do?"

It returns to rest against her hip, though unlike him, she refrains from digging out her own pack of smokes, she seems more interested in the alcohol, though she doesn't drink from it, either, for now. But for all of her casual mischief, it fades briefly - he wouldn't see it, when he's so busy turning away, taking a drag before he tells her about his qualifications for being a priest. /That/, perhaps, wasn't a complete fabrication; he might not be a man of the cloth now but maybe he was, once, though the fact is less significant than the potential that he had freely offered something about himself that lies past the nonchalant veneer he maintains so effortlessly.

"Is it that kind of story, then?" she murmurs. "A man who once had faith and then loses it under strenuous circumstances? Maybe it's your soul that needs saving, luv. Though if that were true." Another laugh. "You sure found yourself the worst kind of enabler. I doubt I'll be helping that at all." She watches him then, the stirrings of something more genuine slipping through her persistent brogue. "I wish I could, but alas, I'm damned, too."

He moves, then, the distance dwindling in favor of a boneless drape against the rails, further contributing to its bend though he doesn't seem to care, either. He'll warn his friends, it seems, though the promise of a debt has her smiling faintly. "Do you, now?" she wonders.

The next question has her tilting her head back, and closing her eyes; the din below becomes more pronounced, the menthol-laced smoke that permeates him all the more noticeable, the distant chirp of desert cicadas, the tickling brush of her own hair when the air slashes a single blonde tress diagonally across her face. She takes the opportunity to sink into her vast and colorful imagination to give him a fitting reply.

"Maybe he'll lose his feet below his ankles first," she tells him, opening her eyes, voice deadpanned. "Then his hands by the wrist, and then his nose. But he gets tae keep his ears so that every shriek of every child at seeing his hideousness will be his tae cherish. Every wee bairn that weeps at his approach, every lass who cries out 'Dear God, what is that thing' will echo in his perfect ears."

If that litany sounds familiar, it should, given Jude's earlier remarks about reading anything he gets his hands on. It's straight from a very popular comedic stage play, though her unique diction and accent lend the lines a different flavor. It prompts another grin from her, with a shake of her head.

"I've nae found him yet, but thanks tae your deacon and his verra many letters, I've a lead tae one of his closer associates who I can always try and pull more information from. As for what I do tae him if I find him..." There's a pause; lashes lower partially over her eyes and for just a moment, her expression looks far away, as if caught in a dream, softening her features and the seam of her lips growing thoughtfully pliant. "...I've nae thought that far. Vengeance is like brushfire, y'ken. It consumes too much, too quickly, if fed too indiscriminately, and people who underestimate Jerry tend tae wind up as kindling."

<Pose Tracker> Jude Moshe has posed.

'And it seems tae be holding, otherwise you wouldnae follow me all the way from the parish.'

"What can I say? I was born making bad decisions."

They're words uttered as haplessly as someone stuck by fate into the most unfortunate of circumstances as Jude rubs the back of his neck, amber eyes rolling skywards as if to question the very heavens about his sorry lot in life. It'd almost be convincing, if not for the lopsided grin that mars his misery with mirth. Just as much as the way he so quickly and conversationally quips, "Yep. Only reason I didn't become a sister -- didn't want to ruin the hair," in the midst of her musings, hardly missing so much as a beat in their back and forth as he taps tumbling ash towards the cooling ground beneath them. Her other words are chewed over as if taking them all with a certain, concrete seriousness that only a true holy man could in matters of spirtual crises. Truly, he has deep ponderings over this rooted in theocratic history--

"Nope. You jinxed it. Too bad; you were doing pretty good for a while there."

-- or, that. Maybe that.

"At the end of the day... I don't really think you have to worry, anyway," comes his next words, carefree as the way his hand waves through the air. "Hell's just a place for people to pay alms to try to avoid when they don't know there's already plenty worse in the real world."

Breezy thumbs up goes right... here.

"So you're in the clear, probably." So says the man who says he's a priest, kind of.

But she laughs, and she offers her suspicions, and Jude Moshe looks positively bamboozled, amber eyes big and blinking expressively. "What? You thought I was kidding about that?" he asks, clearly floored by this revelation, the redhead presses his palm to his forehead and tilts his head back, heaving a crushed groan. "This is what happens when you love too strongly, I guess. Maybe one day..." Obviously at something of a loss, he just breathes out his disappointment with all the resignation in the world, creating a convincing portrait of a broken-hearted man.

Not that it compels him to leave, as it rightly should; not that it stops him from just making himself more comfortable with the groaning protest of that railing beneath him as he crosses arms over his chest, cigarette trailing winding paths of smoke into the sky.

"And honestly," he adds, his tone so much more relaxes than the one previously so stricken with grief,

"Do I look like the kinda guy who aims high?"

A second passes.

"Y'know what? On second thought... don't answer that."

His cigarette once more rests between his lips as Cassidy laments the sorry state they've found themselves in, at an unapproachable impass. His reaction is to take a deeper draw of that tobacco, letting it burn away at leaf and paper with the faint crackle of heat. "You're taking all this way too seriously," says the man who was just utterly heartbroken at being so cruelly rebuffed. "It's not that hard. We're both adults - I'm pretty sure, right? No, don't answer that - we'll just do what adults do. Compromise." Another draw. Jude blows a ring of smoke into the air without so much as a blink.

"... Or pretend I'm insane enough and you're wild enough to make everything work out until it all boils over."

Like adults do.

"Either way. I'm not really all that picky. As we've already proven."

Eventually, Moshe's hands find purchase on the back of his head, lacing together as he angles his half-finished cigarette away from him. Is it that kind of story, Cassidy wonders? "Yep," he answers placidly, staring up at the sky. After a moment, they shut. "I'm just a guy with no anchor for his soul anymore. Sad, right? I'm just in desperate need of someone to save me from myself."

A world-weary sigh follows with perfect pitch and timing. 'I wish I could, but alas, I'm damned, too.' His eyes crack open once more.

"Ah well," he ultimately declares, shoulders lifting. "Guess we're just gonna end up being bad for each other, huh? It's okay. I'm not really in the mood for anything that pretentious right now, anyway."

Hands falling back to his sides, Jude looks back Cassidy's way as she regales him with her intentions. Her recitations. His brows lift, his stare a scrutinizing squint that has all the nature of someone who has no idea what their conversation partner is talking about. "That's not really putting someone to death," he educates her, helpfully, like someone exasperated with someone's insanity.

"That's more, like... putting someone to the pain."

He utters this, completely straightfaced, as if it came homebrewed from his own thoughts. That it dovetails with her own words perfectly? Obviously coincidence.

It's all brought home by the simple, helpless shake of Jude's head as he rests his elbows against the railing, listening to its groan of protest with a careful ear. He listens to her plans, her intentions, her philosophical musings, and just asides, without much care or concern despite the nature of what's being discussed, "I've never really been the vengeance kinda guy, so I'll just have to take your word for it on that one." His brows knot inward, eyes slitting in consideration for a moment.

A moment that ultimately ends with the snap of his fingers.

"Alright, then," he decides with such confidence his words might as well be a foregone and natural conclusion, despite how sudden and frankly daft they are.

"Let's go find this guy and figure out what he knows. Right?"

Let's.

As in,

'A contraction for let us.'

As in 'us.'

And so Jude Moshe decides to insinuate himself into Cassidy's affairs as casually as someone might offer to go on a nice spring stroll.

<Pose Tracker> Cassidy Cain has posed.

And amidst the night air, the waft of tabac smoke and the sounds of countless diversions below, Jude Moshe declares that he is a man born to make bad decisions.

"Ach, well, glad we had that cleared up," Cassidy quips wryly. "I wasnae sure whether it's a natural talent or a skill, but I s'pose if you can walk away from a fight with bandaged fingers despite your verra clear preference for firearms, you have enough of the latter tae afford it."

His discarded potential as a nun aside, and at the tail end of the talk of Hell, her mouth tilts upwards in a faint smirk, inclining her head at him sidelong. "Did I?" she wonders. "Jinx it, I mean. Damn. And here I am with my absolutely glaring penchant tae make things easier on myself." She turns the bottle back to her lips, good humor stitched over her expression. "I s'pose I'll simply just have tae deal with it."

She has taken a swallow once he's posed the rhetorical question as to whether he looks like the type to aim high, but she leaves the other comments unaddressed; of love and loss and way too much glibness and banter for a heartbroken man to engage in. Anyone thus rejected would be walking away, but the show is compelling enough that the implied laughter on her becomes all the more pronounced. "If it makes you feel any better, aiming high is overrated anyway," she tells him gamely, her leaning hand easing out of the rail, index extended and thumb spread, to pantomime a gun. One eye squints shut, as if to aim for his head...and then lowers to aim for the broader expanse of his chest. "You get double the guarantee if you aim low."

The blonde retakes the bottle, turning so she could lean on the rails; a bolt pops free, sent skittering across the roof and falling off the edge. The frame groans at their combined weight, shuddering when she drapes both arms over it again next to him, taking in the festivities below with keen interest burning through that half-lid stare. She recognizes the taste of it, that ever-present addiction to the odds, the means and methods and the sheer potential of the take.

"Though between you and me, there've been a coupla times when it'd been worth it." She winks at him sidelong. "Aiming high. You oughtae try, one day, just tae see if it suits you. Cynicism enables a person tae survive, ay, especially around these parts, but it has this verra irritating habit of taking the joy out of everything. And speaking as a hapless lass you're trying tae woo," the last said with all the dramatic flourish of a seasoned actress, eyes widening until she looks like a doe, batting her lashes at him. "All I want is for you tae be happy, luv."

He suggests a compromise and that earns him another laugh, the wide-eyed look of innocence fading in favor of that same, cutting smile, all the more brilliant against the surrounding shadows. "Teeming with bad decisions, the absolute lack of concern in making devastating mistakes, indulgent of perhaps countless addicting vices and complete and utter disregard of propriety? I hate tae break it tae you, luv, but we make piss poor adults and some would say we nae have any business doing anything together, much less /compromise/. As in agree on something. Together. The likes of you and the likes of me. But what the hell?"

She drains the last of the bottle, eyes practically dancing with merriment. "Could be fun."

Jude catches the reference seamlessly, with what he says, and she tilts her head at that, her grin shot to the heavens with a faint shake of her head, wondering just what she had done in the last few months to deserve /this/ now, of all things. Maybe he was a priest after all, sent by whatever god the Orthodoxy believed in to ensure that she didn't go completely off the rails. Though considering his general temperament, he was just as likely to encourage that eventuality. Equal odds, she decides.

But worth the risk?

"Hm? So the thought's never occurred tae you at all?" she wonders, quirking a brow at him. "Tae balance the scales against someone who'd done you wrong?" There's another laugh, and a broad enough grin to hint at a flash of teeth. "That'd make you a saint, luv, not a bloody priest."

And a saint he very may well be when he decides he was going to come with her to accost one of Jeremiah Black's lieutenants. And for the first time in this entire conversation, her weighty, considering pause is visible on her features. There's nothing apprehensive about it and for all of her expressiveness, something more inscrutable and serious passes over that gold-green gaze.

It is brief, a flitting shadow of whatever lurks underneath the facade of the golden-haired imp. Her smile returns just as easily as the dawn; with her earlier declarations about disregarding propriety, she invades his personal space with a flick of a wrist, index and middle fingers slipping under his wrist and lifting those bandaged knuckles just an inch or two. Her head tilts, to inspect the injury with a purse of her lips. Brows lift, her stare inching up from underneath crescents of lash to look directly into his gilded irises.

"It could be dangerous," she tells him casually, fingers slipping away. "People might get annoyed at best and die at the worst. Could take a few verra long and strenuous rides over plains, maybe a coupla leisurely ones in trains. And I'm nae discounting the possibility of mischief that would probably involve stolen clothes, overripe fruit, false identities and disgruntled livestock." That smile grows. "You may nae escape that corset and those cantaloupes after all, luv. I hope you're ready to end interlopers who insult your pretty blue bonnet."

After a moment's silence, her head cants towards him. "/Funding/, though, I can guarantee. You can say I have my ways. Unless your more priestly sensibilities would take issue tae said ways in which case, speak now or forever hold your peace....or sommat like that."

<Pose Tracker> Jude Moshe has posed.

She wasn't sure if it was a natural talent or a skill. Jude Moshe's smile is one of lazy exasperation.

"That obvious, huh?" remarks the man about his altercation as he wiggles those bandaged fingers indicatively. "I'm gonna save what remains of my wounded pride and say that it's both. Besides, you should see the other guys." His brow furrows. A frown creases his lips.

"... even if they did ruin my favorite jacket. Bastards."

It's a very clear sticking point for a man seems to put so much care into his appearance.

... that it was technically actually his fault in the end never seems to enter the equation. Clearly there are just some lines that must not be crossed.

But it flows like water off him, in the end. He's back to that sense of disaffected tranquility once more, only halted by the bending groan of metal beneath him; it makes him start, briefly, as if surprised that the rails might be giving under their combined weight, even if such a thing should have been patently obvious from the beginning. It leads to his hands shooting up with (clearly accidental) perfect timing just as Cass trains that fingergun upon him, beaded to his forehead. "Whoa now," he utters, with an air of carefulness that exaggerates the subtle absurdity of the moment -- heightened all the more as she trains that index finger of a barrel square on his chest. "Hey, hey -- careful where you point that thing!"

And now those hands are raised in perfect acquiescence, those gray whisps of tobacco smoke rising up like a dissipating flag of surrender in the cooling night air. It might feel all too real, if not for the lackadaisical smile that etches its indolent path across the redhead's lips. Cass turns. Metal screeches out its displeasure with the pop of a bolt. Jude barely even so much as flinches.

Instead, he just settles back into the precariousness of the rail anew, as if casually raising those stakes.

"So people keep telling me," he remarks off-handedly as she speaks about aiming high. "Some of those people are even still alive today. It's kinda impressive." Eyelashes bat at him, green and gold eyes wide with romantic innocence. Jude's response is a skeptical chew of his cheek.

"Huh. I sure lucked out, falling for you," is Jude Moshe's response, in a tone designed to be just flat enough to be a direct contradiction to Cass' passionate dramatics.

"And in my defense...

"... I'm starting to think just standing around in your general vicinity might as well count for 'aiming high' under that kinda definition."

The railing whines underneath them in rusty agreement.

Piss-poor adults. Jude can't help but scoff at that, amused and dismissive all at once. "Hey, hey, speak for yourself. I'm pretty sure I don't qualify for one of those things. Lately. And I've even got a respectable job," though he fails to specify just what that job even is, if it's not a priest-- "and a -pretty solid- solid tally on my vices... ... okay. Alright. Fine. Maybe we both make for a couple of half-assed adults. But hey-- "

He burns away the last of his cigarette, carelessly flicking it behind him into the wandering throngs of people below.

"-- the two of us, working together? We might just be able to make a whole ass."

Telling of the hopelessness of this idea, Jude turns a pointedly deaf ear to the shouting protests below as his cigarette butt rebounds off someone's unfortunate face.

"Anyway," he says, just loud enough to be heard over the passing complaints beneath, "I don't know about being a saint. I just don't have the energy in me to hold that kinda grudge. Are you kidding me? Something that spans years or decades without any guarantee of satisfaction? I got better things to be doing with my time than that. Like a nice nap. Kudos to you for managing to hold on to a thing like that. Seriously. It's commendable. Me? ... I've just never had it in me, I guess."

He tips his index and middle fingers off his forehead, in a simple. cheeky salute.

"Though, if you wanna call me a saint among men, I'm sure not gonna stop you. By all means."

A brief flicker of a pause; Jude seems to pay no mind to that moment of perfect inscrutability from the golden-haired mischief-maker, letting his bandaged hand fall away from his forehead with an intended trajectory of a limp rest at his side. It never quite makes it. The flick of a wrist, a turn or a twist, and he finds two fingers interceding at the underside of his bandaged wrist. Golden eyes shutter in a blink, but he doesn't pull away; that gaze, calm and quiet, lifts towards Cassidy with a hard-to-place sense of curiosity as she inspects the bandages of his hand. They look recent; there's a tinge of red here and there just underneath the white, blotting like smudged records of recent conflict. His pulse steady, those bandages eventually disappear into his sleeve -- with every indication they're probably not the only signs of mending to mark him. Just the most visible.

It'd be hard to tell just to look at him, however; he scarcely even blinks when that green-eyed stare meets his own, head tilt almost questioningly as if to ask 'Got what you need?' without a word uttered about it directly. Her fingers slip away, and she speaks. He listens to her warnings with brows that slowly lift higher and higher with something inscrutable all their own. Her head cants.

'Unless your more priestly sensibilities would take issue tae said ways...'

She's only gotten that far in her obligatory ultimatum when a bandaged index finger lifts to press against her lips ever-so-casually.

"Shhh," utters Jude Moshe, voice confident, caring, conscientious--

"...You had me at 'funding.'"

--and ultimately, unavoidably incorrigible.

"I'm not wearing a corset, though. I've got my limits."

...

"No matter how well it matches the bonnet."

<Pose Tracker> Cassidy Cain has posed.

"Watch where you're throwin' your trash, asshole!" yells the pedestrian from below, ash on his cheek.

If she hears the epithet, Cassidy bears it no mention, nor does she even turn her head to acknowledge that she just heard Jude being yelled at. Instead, she chuckles, another disbelieving look at the skies at that throughout his responses; like silver points of two dueling foils, the exchange hasn't slackened in its pace, nor has its edges dulled to the point of her losing interest in it. It was rare, if nothing else, to come across another who could at the very least match her in this arena. But then again, those who tended to read for the sake of reading were seldom slow in that regard.

Especially that remark about two halves becoming one whole ass, to which she replies: "I think anyone who spends any amount of time with the likes of us would say we're two giant arses that'll only turn intae a gigantic one if shoved together. I dinnae know if anyone wants that, except for perhaps myself. Because if nothing else, I'm verra curious tae see what happens."

Would she, really? Take on the company of a man she doesn't know, on an undertaking that she knows is superbly, unrelentingly dangerous? She knows nothing about Jude Moshe, he who was once a priest and now in a supposedly respectable profession. He could be one of them, sent to cut her off at the knees before she even got within breathing distance of Jeremiah. He could be a bounty hunter, or an assassin, sent by any one of the countless souls she had swindled or otherwise aggravated in the past. Anyone in her position wouldn't just call her consideration of this arrangement foolhardy, he or she would call it bloody stupid.

But, as she said it herself, it could be fun.

What he says about grudges earns him another twinkle from those eyes, her fingers drifting lightly over the rusty cage that prevents them from a painful fall. "You'd be amazed at what you're capable of if you have experience and patience, and a woman can do anything if she has both of those," she tells him, regarding revenge...though he'll have enough chances to learn, if he's serious about this, that the philosophy applies to almost everything she does. Reckless, yes, passionate, yes, but hardly ever stupid and when she /decides/ to do something...

...well, he'll find out soon enough.

With her very careful, almost delicate scrutiny of his most visible injuries, she misses the look he gives her, though the intensity of his curiosity lends the act with enough tangibility that she practically feels it. Then again, she already knows that these wounds are recent, and extensive with the way those bandages don't end at the wrist; he did mention other people who ruined his jacket, and for all of his characteristic indolence, he actually seemed genuinely irritated about the state of it. That was yet another surprising bit.

Still, she gives him the caveats; she is inclined to give them, she is not a /monster/, after all. The man deserves to know what he's getting into, though she is not discounting the idea that he could fall into the lot of others that came before him - people who think they have the patience, sanity and stomach for the kinds of things she gets up to, for no other end than to make her own life interesting...and the occasional causes she deems worth fighting, but such instances are very rare, indeed.

She would say more but his finger finds her lips, resting lightly there as he claims that she had him at funding. A hand lifts, to nudge his digit away so she could laugh, brows winging upwards yet again. "Well, that's tae be expected," she tells him breezily. "Travel costs, food costs, stays at hotels and the regular socializing and drinking in saloons, and while I can pass off for a wealthy lass." And in fact has pretended to be such on many, many occasions. "I'm sadly nae so well off. But there are ways, and you'll be well acquainted with them soon enough. It wouldnae be any trouble, bankrolling this entire affair." She gives him a long, considering look. "Maybe you are crazy enough after all."

With that, she eases the burden of the bent railing by shifting away from it, and takes a few steps closer to him. It is seconds, if that, when she fills his vision entirely; when the side of his face finds the warmth of long, deceptively elegant fingers as they fashion a loose cradle against it, the pad of her thumb and the slight bite of its fingernail finding the underside of his jaw, moving to tilt it slightly back. Her face turns to the side.

Her mouth is all breath when it reaches him, softness ringing the briefest clasp of teeth. There is nothing chaste about the way she buries a kiss just partially on the hollow of his throat, most of it landing on his collar and barricading his skin from the heat of it, with the very intent to leave the barest hint of pink against the pristine white of his shirt. The universal symbol of clandestine interludes with a woman, and usually one that spells a hefty amount of trouble.

She lifts her head, head tilted to inspect her handiwork. Her hand drops, redirecting its trajectory as she turns to retrieve her hat. The wide-brimmed affair sinks over the pale-gold lustre of her hair.

"Luck's always been a lady, luv," she reminds him, another wry smile curling upwards. "And since there's clearly nae dissuading you from me, I 'spose you'll need all that I can spare you. I wasnae joking about this being dangerous."

<Pose Tracker> Jude Moshe has posed.

"Well," begins Jude Moshe, blithely oblivious to the righteous rage of the passerby below,

"here's to our gargantuan ass, then. May it forever be possessed of vast girth."

He's straight-faced throughout that entire thing. He'd probably even raise a glass or bottle in toast, if he had one.

Or if Cassidy hadn't selfishly drank all the rest of what cheap swill they -did- have.

At the very least, Jude seems to take to offering his services to troublesome blonde as naturally as one might offer to do something as harmless as watch a beloved dog for an old friend. There's a myriad of concerns on either side of the equation -- and the red-haired man certainly hasn't been exactly as forthcoming as Cassidy has (which is, truly, saying something). He could be anyone. Anything.

But right now, he's just the man with the friendly smile who treats this all like a foregone conclusion.

After all...

... it could be fun.

A woman can do anything with experience and patience, she tells him. "I believe it," he says sincerely, like a man who has dealt with enough of it to speak with experience. "Sadly, I'm only one of those three. So..."

The roll of his shoulders couldn't be more airily hapless if he tried. It's a gift, and a curse.

"Guess I'm kinda outta luck there, huh?"

Something he'll surely learn firsthand in time.

She has her warnings. He patiently listens to most of them, in a way, with that keen stare, that at least suggests he's actually paying attention, which might at least put him a cut above some. That he responds so blithely in the end might go either way, really -- but at the very least, Jude strikes the look of a man who understands the risks better than some would. And so he cuts her off from the tail end. Says she's convinced him. Lack of mention of anything before 'funding' might suggest she had him lost at those points, but, well -- we can't all be perfect, can we?

"Damn. Seriously? And here I was kinda hoping you were the runaway heiress of powerful water baron or something," laments Jude as his new companion confides her meager status. He hefts a brow, and looks askance, his finger brushed-aside landing quietly on the poor, strained metal of the guard rail beneath him. "I gotta be honest, my love for you might have diminished just a bit, having learned that. Hope you can forgive me, but I..."

He might have more to say. In fact, he definitely would. But whatever it was dies on the vine before it can roll off his tongue as the blonde approaches him. The bending rail heaves a weary though mild sigh of relief at its brief respite from the pressure of Cassidy upon its rusted bearings, only to groan anew in despair as Jude slowly turns against it to face her fully. One step, two. Eventually, she is there, inside his personal bubble, her hand resting long, fleet fingers along the curve of his face, the angle of his jaw.

It's not quite easy to say just when the dual sensations of cheap cloth and warm skin reach either of Cassidy's shoulders, but the presence of his hands there, one bandaged and one not, can be felt accutely with the pinch of fingernails at Jude Moshe's chin. For all he dresses well, the calluses that decorate his fingers are rough. For all that he carries himself so loosely, his grip is firm. Considering how easily his head tilts back for the urging of her fingernails, for all he doesn't move when she brushes in towards him, the strong touch of those hands might as well be to hold her fast to him.

The due caution and preparation in the curling grasp of those fingers and clipped nails is an undoubtedly subtle one, even so close.

The grip of someone who's spent their whole life surviving it.

Her face disappears against his throat to introduce the collar of his shirt to her lips, and the press of his thumbs against the curve of her shoulder doesn't shift, neither loosening up nor tightening further. It's only when she pulls back, inspects, and moves for the fancy brim of her hat that his hands slip away, as if they were never even holding onto her to begin with. And all that's left to prove any of it beyond mere memory is that small smudge of pink against what was once unadulterated white.

It's only then that his own breath escapes, in such a slow, easy exhale one would be hard-pressed to know he had even been holding it that entire time.

He has a smile to match her own when she gives him that reminder, dry and resigned in its amusement. "I guess that means I'll just have to stow the inevitable sea of complaints I'll have in the future, huh? But hey -- at least I'll be getting an interesting story out of all this if I live through it."

He looks down at that trace of pink decorating his collar. Slowly, he leans off the railing.

Just in time for the pressure to pop off one more precarious bolt just as he straightens.

"Huh," he utters, looking down at the guard rail for a moment. "Looks like it's already working. How about that?" His hands find the pockets of his pants. His head cocks, smile a lopsidedly confident thing.

"Appreciate the gesture. Then again, luck's kinda a neutral thing, isn't it? So I guess the question is whether you're one of the good ones, or the bad ones."

He looks down, once more, at that mark. Like he even has to ask. After all...

"Well. Guess I'll be finding that out soon enough."

... and that could be fun.

Right?

<Pose Tracker> Cassidy Cain has posed.

She cuts him off with what she does and the only sound that follows after is blissful, blessed silence; with how they spent so many minutes fencing at one another verbally, the lack of speech from either of them is foreign and alien enough to hang heavy in the air between them, as if something that doesn't belong. Anyone watching might even construe this as a romantic interlude between two people, being half-shrouded as they are by pots of medicinal plants, perched on top of a building for a better view of the Alley's festivities - to sneak a kiss in the shadows. Were she not who she was, had she come away with her experience with the Thespians more as Theresa's creature than her own, she would easily succumb to the fantasy. After all, that was what the best actresses did; they lost themselves to the role and for all of his laid-back cynicism, Jude possesses enough charm and self-awareness to make that easy, to make that genuine, with the lift of his hands to rest on her shoulders and hold her there, pressing from above soft, beaten leather.

It would be easy to do that. It would be easy to get lost.

Except...

...except she isn't one of Theresa's proteges. She is Cassidy Cain, a creature just as molded by her eccentricities and past exploits as she is by Filgaia's unforgiving terrain, and she is almost completely certain that his grip is for a more practical and incorrigible purpose. Say, for instance, if the rail behind him gives way and he falls. She does not put it past Jude Moshe to accept his fate, and /take her with him/.

The slow breath he releases after is its own reward, though she doesn't give much by any way of indication that she notices. But he would know, just by the way she looks at him, that glint of feminine, near-feline satisfaction burning from the darkness cast by the brim of her hat - at having pushed him off balance, just a little. His confident smile is matched by her more subtle one, just a tilt of her mouth at the pliant corners. Against the backdrop of shadow and distant torchlight, hat tilted and looking at him that way, she is the very picture of humor and wile, and the absolute dearth of apology.

"Oh, you nae need tae stow said sea of complaints on my account," she tells him gamely. "By all means complain. With the way you carry on, I'd bet all the gella in my person that it'll be extremely entertaining. I trust long, awkward silences wouldnae be the status quo between us, anyway. Why, were I the more suspicious sort, I'd accuse you of trying tae beat me in my own game...and if that's the case, I hope you're ready for a verra long fight."

Punctuated there by another bolt popping off the rail, pinging off into the surrounding cluster of blacks. It's already working, he says. There's a lift of her brows, turning to the rail with a deepening stitch in between. There's a sidelong glance at him. and then the rusted boundary.

A finger extends to poke it.

The entire railing comes off entirely in a screech of tortured, twisted metal, protesting loudly as it is sent careening into the ground below. The loud crash and groan cuts through the surrounding throngs of revelry. A street musician pauses from strumming his guitar. Several eyes turn to look upward at the apothecary's roof.

Cassidy is no longer there, leaving Jude to take the brunt of those stares if he doesn't act fast enough; perhaps an answer to the question he had posed just a few moments earlier as to whether she represents good luck, or the exact opposite. She may very well be one or the other.

Or, distressingly enough, both.

Her laughter floats amidst the hubbub and humid night air as she drops a few steps below. Her head tips up to look over at him, eyes flashing over another pearly smile.

"You better walk me back before I completely get away from you, then," she tells him, a finger disengaging the inner lock of the fence they hopped moments before. "We'd make a poor working pair, if we dinnae know the whereabouts of the other. A more generous soul would say that she hopes she knows what you're doing." Mirth underscores her expression once more. "But sommat tells me you prefer it this way."

<Pose Tracker> Jude Moshe has posed.

He knows. It's why he smiles.

To hide the way he curses himself internally.

He still misses nary a beat save that one, brief blip on the radar, one hand lifting to push through the organized chaos that is the red mane of his hair until his palm flattens with a light smack to his forehead. "Generous of you," he remarks to her expansive offer to listen to his potential, perhaps inevitable, list of grievances. The suggestion actually manages to wrest a laugh from the man, brief and wry though it might be. He shakes his head as his hand falls back to his side, turning diverted look the blonde's way. "I dunno about that. I bet we could have a lot of poignant silences shared between us. Meaningful stares that hold the dizzying weight of breathless conversations beyond mere words..."

His purple prose peters out with the paused purse of his lips. His brows scrunch inward. "... but that sure as hell sounds like a lot more effort than I'm willing to put forth. Sorry. We'll always have the dream."

'Why, were I the more suspicious sort, I'd accuse you of trying tae beat me in my own game...'

"Good thing you're not suspicious, then," he asides to her, ever-affable. "Otherwise this'd end up real awkward. I've never really been one to back down from a challenge."

...

"I mean, you know, as long as it was worth my while."

Important ammendments to make when realizing you will be traveling with someone for a spell.

The rail teeters, but doesn't quite totter off the side of the building. Jude whistles appreciatively at his good fortunes.

And Cassidy smites them down with nothing but the single nudge of a finger.

poke

SCHKRREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

CRASH

And there, left standing alone, is Jude Moshe, looking down at the wrent and rusted ruin that currently clogs the stone-paved street beneath him. His brows hefted, his mouth ever-so-slightly ajar, his head tilts very, very slowly to his left until it is a 45 degree angle. He meets those stares head on.

"... Hey there. Safety inspector," he explains to those down below, jabbing a finger at himself. A moment passes.

"... This spot? Not safe. Watch out."

...

"Well. My job's done. Soooo..."

And just like that, he just sort of... walks away.

They can't all be winners.

So Jude Moshe approaches the laughter of Cassidy Cain with a rueful smile, hands stuffed in his pocket as he pushes the fence open with the casual nudge of his boot heel, in perfect time to the deft unlatching of its lock. "I better walk you back before you get me accused me of attempted murder," is his rebuttal, delivered with easy, flat grace as he so gamely slides past her to hold the fence open. Like a gentleman. We'd make a poor working pair, she begins. His eyes find hers. His answer isn't even delayed by a second, delivered with prophetic vagueness and layered meaning.

"I don't think you'll have to worry about any of that. And besides..."

Once they're out, he'll slip comfortably to her side, to offer the loop of his arm. Take her all the way back with nary a complaint. Fill the time with amiable small talk. The spitting image of a gentleman. 'A more generous soul would say she hopes she knows what you're doing.'

"... Something tells me you prefer it this way, too."

Because it's just the kind of man he is.

<Pose Tracker> Cassidy Cain has posed.

Before she could take a step further out, he's already there, to nudge the gate open with a boot and hold it open for her. There is a pause, head tilting to the red-haired man's direction. For a moment, that silence returns when amber meets glade-green, prefacing the reassurance - one that tastes the same as a threat - he gives her about not having to worry about losing track of one another in the wilds of Filgaia.

"Mmm," Cassidy muses. "Stuck with you, ay?"

And as if to emphasize the very fact, he offers her an arm. Head canted at an angle, a hand reaches out to tuck into his inner elbow, falling into an easy step with him as they move out of Gentleman's Alley and to wherever it is that she is staying. Some would say that is foolhardy, too, to show a man that she doesn't know where she is resting her head while she remains in Adlehyde.

Those concerns seem to be very much behind her, thoughts that barely even register, all for the sheer sake of seeing with her own eyes what happens next. And something already tells her that Jude will not disappoint. That, on its own, brings its own set of thrills.

'Something tells me you prefer it this way, too.'

"Really?" she wonders with a laugh, as they lose themselves further in the crowd.

"What /ever/ could have given that away?"