Return of Titus Pullo and Arya Stark (AKA Vegas and a cheap buttery alternative to therapy. Open!)

[runaway-stark.livejournal.com]

She was safe, she was warm, and the whole situation was very much like being asleep. And then with an abrupt pop!, Arya Stark was salty and buttery and very much wide awake.

She was disoriented for several seconds, trying to mesh two distinct memories of where she had just been. The first set was of Braavos, and the House of Black and White, and going to sleep after drinking a cup of bitter milk. The other was of this place, this castle... Hogwarts, she thought, and faces flashed in her mind, at once familiar and alien. Memories of most of her family here, though they were more impressions than images. And memories of some time before, coming back into the school to check in with her temporary guardian Kal, only to find his name on the plaque. It had been the last in a chain of... something... and she had stopped fighting and gone to sleep.

"Welcome back," said a man's voice from somewhere above her. She wiped greasy butter out of her eyes and looked up, seeing a large, burly man in a garishly-colored button-up shirt left open over a white undershirt, a pair of short trousers cut right around the knee, and a pair of worn-looking leather sandals in a style that she'd never seen, not even in Braavos where travelers from all over came. "Nice little pigsticker you've got there, eh, girl?"

Arya looked around her and found a sword--her sword, Needle--next to her and covered in as much butter as she was. She grabbed for it and started to try and wipe it off on the leg of her own cut-off trousers, but it did absolutely no good. The man chuckled. "Here," he said, reaching into a bag that he carried slung over one shoulder and pulling out another brightly-colored shirt. "Good girl," he said approvingly. "You've a good sense of priorities. You know how to properly care for a sword."

"Of course I do," she said irritably, more at the situation than at the man. The shirt was getting soaked with grease, but Needle looked slightly better than before. "I'm going to be a water dancer."

"Is that so?" the man said with the genial blandness of someone who didn't know what she was talking about. "Good for you, then. Name's Titus Pullo."

Arya looked at him warily, considered that she was holding a sword and he wasn't, and remembered vaguely that she was safe at Hogwarts. "Arya Stark."

((Both Arya and Pullo are available in here. Come on in and say hi!))

Comments

[fiercefluffy.livejournal.com]

((yay!))

Though togged out in modern-day casualwear, Octavian still carried himself with the bearing of a togate patrician. At eighteen he was definitely too old to act the fluffy bunny child, and even when he was a child he had been remarkably reserved. All of which was to say he could not, strictly speaking, run up to Pullo for a gigantic hug.

But his face lit up, a genuine smile softening the regal Julius features, and that from Octavian was just about equivalent to a bear hug.

"Ave, Pullo!"

[pullo-xiii.livejournal.com]

((Yay for a lack of cloning projects this week!))

Pullo's face lit up to see Octavian, and while he was indeed the bear hugging type, he couldn't just embrace Octavian Caesar. "Sir!" He reached out one arm. Manly arm-clasping was all right, wasn't it? "Titus Pullo, reporting back from Las Vegas," he said, still smiling. "How've you been, then, eh?"

[fiercefluffy.livejournal.com]

Manly arm-clasping was entirely proper. Octavian's arm-clasping would in fact have been much less impressive were it not for the tutelage of Pullo. It was a very good thing that Atia had realized her ability to inculcate masculine virtues began and ended with prescribing the occasional dish of fresh goat testicles.

The arm-clasp having been executed in what Octavian felt was the correct manner (though he'd never have Pullo's strength, he could at least stand firm), the young Caesar couldn't quit grinning. "I've been well. I want to hear about Las Vegas. Did you find any Spice Girls, Pullo?"

[pullo-xiii.livejournal.com]

"I did, actually. Did you know, they aren't really prostitutes at all? They're singers. Arguably. I found a lot of prostitutes, though, real ones. Do you know what they're doing with themselves?" Oh, here went Pullo, off on a rant several months in the making. "Lots of them do something to their breasts now, and it's like unripe fruit in there. They're not doing that here yet, are they?" he asked, almost fearfully. Almost, because Titus Pullo was almost never afraid.

[fiercefluffy.livejournal.com]

"I think I've seen what you're talking about," murmured Octavian thoughtfully. Those had been some fairly revealing outfits the girls wore in that club where Maia'd taken him ... "I don't think the wizarding women do that, if that's what you mean -- witches, that is to say." Female wizards. Best to be very precise about these things. "To be completely frank I believed it was a practice favored by saltatrices tonsae."

Barbered dancing-girls. The classical Roman term for drag queens.

Because why would a natural woman desire to do such a thing, when her mammary glands were plainly meant for the nourishment of the next generation?

[pullo-xiii.livejournal.com]

Pullo nodded. "Good. They just don't feel right, you know. And most of them are so skinny, not like the good old days."

He brightened up again as he changed the subject. "But the big thing in Las Vegas, apart from the whores, is the gambling. So many ways to lose money, like you've never seen! Dice, cards, these things called slot machines, all over the place. And some place called the Luxor, didn't look a thing like Egypt at all."

[fiercefluffy.livejournal.com]

(( I've just gotten to the last of the Masters of Rome books, Antony and Cleopatra, and this is making the thread crack me up all the more. Pullo in Vegas!Luxor ... *diiies* ))

Like many politicians, Octavian held double standards. Unlike many politicians, he hadn't conceived of those double standards to allow himself more latitude. Rather, he felt that gambling and whoring were perfectly all right for good ol' legionaries like Pullo; the ones who should deny themselves such vices were the patricians, including Octavian himself -- and especially the patrician women, most notably Octavian's mother and sister. A happy, well-entertained legionary was a good legionary, and a happy Pullo was a Pullo as Pullo should be, in Octavian's eyes.

"Luxor? In the United States? That is a surprise!" Oh, Octavian, just wait until you hear about the other casinos.

[pullo-xiii.livejournal.com]

((Apologies for the wait, work got crazy busy! Also, I need to polish off my to-read pile and get hold of those since Audible doesn't seem to have them.))

"And that's not all," he added, warming up quite happily to the subject. "Got one called 'Excalibur', supposed to be British. Doesn't look like any Britain I've ever seen, not even this new modern one without the hairy bastards everywhere. Oh, they've got a place called 'Caesars Palace,' too! Got a statue of your uncle--father, sorry--and everything. Even working on a tower (http://www.mercurynews.com/california/ci_12834029?nclick_check=1) named after you."