Iolite

Gives me big "Sir Fluff" vibes.

Iolite Indigo

He's a pine marten 

Ivory and Iolite met when Iolite was freshly seventeen. Iolite was working at a bartender at a local watering hole that his dad owned. Was it illegal for him to be working that young? Yes, very much so, but Iolite had both the charisma and wit to pull it off. Up rolls Ivory, the scariest looking guy in town who everyone gives about a 6ft berth. Does Iolite care? Not a bit, he’s not getting paid to care. He’ll pour the man a drink anyways.

(I should also mention that, due to a head injury which occurred when he was a kid, Iolite is unable to feel fear. Hm! Wonder if that means anything.)

So he pours Ivory a drink, and gets to talking. Usually, people like spilling their secrets to the bartender. Not Ivory though, and he just gives Iolite a steely glare. Iolite don’t care, he just keeps on talking. Even if Ivory’s mere presence is keeping people far away from the bar, he’ll keep on treating Ivory just like any other customer. So, Ivory comes back. Iolite does the same song and dance— talking up a storm without asking any prying questions or showing the slightest bit of unease or hesitation at Ivory’s presence. So Ivory comes back again. And again. Same thing every time. And eventually, Iolite gets a response.

Almost two decades later, and Ivory considers Iolite to be his “oldest and dearest friend”. Never mind the fact that Iolite is his only friend, being the only person alive that is neither afraid of Ivory nor important enough for someone to pay Ivory to kill him. Iolite no longer bartends (it was fun, sure, but not his calling), and works as a small-time lawyer appointed by the state when someone can’t actually pay for one. Truth be told, he’s pretty damn good at it. They go out for drinks whenever their schedules allow it. Their friendship is pretty much the strongest relationship in Ivory's life.

It’s not like Iolite would take a bullet for Ivory (though Ivory would certainly kill anyone who tried to shoot Iolite), or that Ivory would share all of his secrets with Iolite (though Iolite certainly wouldn’t mind sharing his). They’re just. They’re just friends. Iolite is in his late 30’s, and he thinks Ivory is a bit strange (and is at least tangentially aware of his “work”), but that never mattered one bit to him. What mattered is that Ivory was consistent, and never seemed to ask more of Iolite than what he already was. Ivory just appreciates that he’s able to keep Iolite around.

Case in point...

Iolite has just finished defending a client. He won the case, nice! It was probably some sort of domestic abuse case, where a husband was apparently beating his wife. Iolite was defending the husband because he simply didn't have the ability to get anyone else. Turns out though, the husband was being set up, and the abuse was actually going the other way around. The wife was incredibly manipulative and abusive, and was actually cheating on him. The plan was for the husband to take the fall, his family to pay out for damages, and the wife to get away scot free. Iolite was able to prove that the evidence against the husband was planted and bring the truth to light. So, great! Iolite saved an innocent man, which was pretty much what he liked about the job. He liked being the court-appointed lawyer because that meant he could defend people who normally wouldn't be able to. Happy ending, warm and fuzzy feelings all around, yada yada yada.

So Iolite is walking around town as he normally does, and it's getting late. It's dark out, and he's usually never had to worry about getting robbed because he's normally a pretty tough looking guy, so he's not paying attention to the fact that he's being followed. Not until he hears the sound of heavy footsteps fast approaching, and turns his head just in time to see the dark glint of a gun.

So he ducks into an alleyway and the chase is on. He hasn't really been keeping track of where he was and pretty soon he has no idea which passages lead further into the alleyways and which lead him out of it. He hears the echo of gunfire before the pain shoots up his leg, the bullet going right through the side of it. Not enough to keep him from running, and just near enough to the surface that it didn't hit any major arteries or tendons, bones, and it actually went all the way through-- but none of that matters if he's about to die, now does it?

He makes another turn, but it's futile. Dead end, and he's slowing down fast. The assailant is no longer running, rather walking briskly-- he thinks he recognizes their face but he's not sure, he sees a ton of new people every day and he can't possibly remember all of them. He opens his mouth to say something, to plead maybe, but the words die in his throat as the shine of the gun pointed right at him quickly kills any hope of surviving this. He falls against a dumpster, then a wall, screwing his eyes shut.

This really isn't how he thought he'd go, dying in a dingy alleyway with nothing but the stench of days-old garbage for comfort. He never thought he'd be important enough to even throw an ill-intentioned punch at, much less be hunted down with intents to kill. He was just a small-time lawyer, he never thought he'd deal with something like this. He hopes in vain that maybe his assailant will kill him in one shot instead of aiming at something less final than his head and leaving him to bleed out. Maybe if he's lucky, he won't even hear the click of the trigger before he's--

--The next thing he hears is the *crunch* of shattered bones and the *snap* of pulled-apart flesh.

When he opens his eyes, his assailants head is just... gone. There's a rough stump where it should be, and something dark lying on the ground, but nothing resembling the actual shape or features of a head. As if everything within it had been squeezed with such a force that whatever formed its pitiful fleshy barriers gave way and was quickly reduced to a pile of gelatinous, indistinguishable pulp. And wouldn't you know it, there's Ivory, bloodstained hands already back in his pants pockets and face as even as it was the day Iolite met him. Come to think of it, Iolite is pretty sure he's never seen Ivory *really* smile, and even now, the demon looking down upon his bewildered expression, he can only see the faintest ghost of one, right under the tiniest bit of arterial spray that left dark droplets on the side of Ivory's snout.

"Care for a drink?" Ivory asked, voice smooth and even carrying the cadence of someone slightly bored, as if he had somewhere better to be. "You look like you can use one."

Iolite nodded and allowed Ivory to help him to his feet.

Later on, in the sparsely-decorated apartment with looks that screamed of being inhabited by someone who moved around a lot, leg bandaged by someone who obviously knew what they were doing and the combination of whisky and painkillers numbing his senses, all Iolite could thing about was how, despite two decades of a friendship with Ivory under his belt, he'd never actually been to his house. But Ivory had been to his. And, if what little he could see outside the window (and through his drugged up haze) led him to believe correctly, then his house was definitely closer to their little rendezvous site in those forgotten alleyways than Ivory's was.